CHAPTER FOUR
"Aren't you ready yet, Prakash?" called Dina from her room, the inevitable irritation creeping into her tone.
"Shortly," was the rather curt reply, as Prakash clipped on his diamond cuff-links and adjusted his tie to his satisfaction.
When it came to visiting Dina's relatives, he tried to delay as much as he could. The irritation in her voice merely served as a fresh spur to his sense of injury. Typical of Dina, he thought to himself resentfully, that she did not have the sensitivity to realize herself that he might not like to attend a party, (even a 'family' party), when not even a week had elapsed since his first wife's death! And he was too defeated by even the thought of further marital discord, to suggest it himself.
Damn! He suddenly remembered: it was Dina's birthday, soon!
Just the next day after Karuna's twelfth day ceremony, in fact. Thank God he had remembered in time! He'd better buy a present before it was too late. Some perfume, maybe. Dina loved perfume. Applied lashings of it, too!
* * * *
The traffic was unusually heavy near the President Hotel that day. As they crawled farther haltingly, Dina looked pointedly at her wristwatch every few moments. But it was she who had caused the final delay, Prakash told himself in self-justification; giving some last-minute instructions to their live-in maid, Fatima.
At last they were at the gates of the Parsee Colony near Grant Road Station where Shirin and Jamshed Dumasia lived with their only son, Tehmul. Tehmul was unmarried. He had not as yet found the right daughter-in-law for his mother. As he drove slowly past the solid old buildings, Prakash could not quite shake off the feeling of being stared at from behind all those curtained windows.
As he pulled up, Dina powdered her nose, adjusting the rear-view mirror, patted her lacquered hair into place and got out, giving her saree a twitch.
The medium sized hall was cluttered with furniture and people.Shirin had brought out every artefact and decorative piece she had hoarded through the years like a magpie, and placed it on display. The effect was a trifle bizarre, reminding Prakash irresistibly of Chor Bazaar.A minuscule bit of genuine Wedgewood cowered apologetically in the shadow of an imposing piece of Benares brass, while younger versions of Shirin and Jamshed beamed determinedly from the inevitable wedding photograph onto a particularly hideous glass sculpture of the fox trying to reach the grapes . . . the sour grapes. And Prince Charles and Lady Diana still smiled cozily together on a ceramic jug, given the pride of place on Shirin's overcrowded sofa-top.
The guests were a shade more prepossessing. Some rather more than the others, thought Prakash, his eyes on Dina's beloved niece, looking exquisite in an Oriya saree of gorgeous weave worn semi Gujarati style, the pallo left loose, held in place by a slim belt of oxidized silver. A silver choker and matching earrings complemented the ensemble, defiantly chosen by Scherezade who knew full well that her Shinn Fui would frown upon anything so un-Parsee-like and would have preferred a nice chiffon or georgette saree instead. Her choice however was applauded by Zerxes, whom Shirin insisted on calling 'Sherrie's steady', deaf to Scherezade's protests to that appalling appellation.
Prakash looked at Zerxes with interest. "Looks like a cold blooded devil," he thought to himself. "Rather attractive in an unusual fashion. Must be the mix of Parsee-French blood!"
Zerxes Avari looked indeed cold-blooded. What was worse, he looked almost indecently at ease in a room full of his girl-friend's relatives, all eyeing him, some covertly, some openly, with varying degrees of interest, disapproval and speculation. But that was before Dina and Prakash entered the room! Not even Zerxes' French mother and his ambiguous relationship with the Beauty of the Family could hold as much as a wick to the most rattled skeleton in the family cupboard.
"Dina, Prakash, how good of you to come!" gushed Shirin, rushing forward to embrace her younger sister and shake hands with Prakash.
She had a mind that thought in exclamation marks. She was a thin, sharp featured lady in her early fifties, wrapped in a nylon printed saree already coming out at the pleats, wisps of hair coming undone from what appeared to be a hurriedly put-up bun. Her restless eyes never dwelt for long on anyone object, and she had hands to match: thin, claw-like, almost in perpetual motion, worrying the cuticles when they had nothing else to flutter over.
After greeting the late-comers effusively, she glanced around, as though to gauge the reactions of her other relatives. Most of those present had been interestedly watching her reception of the sister who was the cause of the juiciest scandal in the family, which had been given a fresh lease of life by the mysterious suicide of Prakash's first wife.
Jamshed Dumasia, a simple man with shrewd eyes, greeted the couple courteously, nothing in his manner hinting at the avidity with which his wife had tried to discuss Karuna's mysterious suicide, while dressing for dinner.
"What will you have, Prakash, Dina?" he inquired."Whisky, rum, gin, wine?"
"Trust you Parsees to keep a bit of every poison," laughed Prakash with rather ill-judged jocularity. His unease with Dina's relatives almost always made him say the wrong thing at the wrong time, surprising gaucherie out of an otherwise assured and highly successful businessman.
A glance at Dina's face was enough to make him realize his tactlessness. Damn it, Dina was almost absurdly sensitive about this conversion business, he thought to himself resentfully. Looking more like a censorious schoolmarm than a wife! Well, she ought to have learned by now that he was no complaisant Bawa husband, he told himself, flicking a slightly contemptuous glance at his host, who generally appeared to be overpowered by his garrulous wife.
In this however, he did less than justice to Jamshed Dumasia, who appeared not to have noticed anything untoward either in Prakash's comment or the sudden rigidity that froze Dina. He mixed them their drinks, talking easily all the while, then drew Prakash away to introduce him to Zerxes, leaving Dina to circulate by herself. Dina, as was usual in such gatherings, first made for the one person from whom she was assured of a genuine, uncritical, welcome.
She went and hugged Scherezade, murmuring that it was good to see her.
"Good to see you too!" her niece responded warmly, drawing her onto a two-seater sofa, a little away from the rest of their relatives. "But are you all right? You don't look too wel1!"
"Oh I'm fine," protested Dina, leaning back. "Just a bit of insomnia sometimes," she admitted lightly, averting her eyes from the candid, searching gaze of her niece's strange, changeable eyes. "Tell me," she cast a significant glance at Zerxes. "Are you. . ."
"Yes, we are. . ." Scherezade cut in as Dina trailed off uncertainly, smiling a shade defiantly at her aunt. "And", she went on, a laughing warning in her voice, "don't ask me when we're going to be married! We haven't bothered to plan anything. We're happy as we are. Most I marriages are sham, anyway. Forster knew what he was talking about."
They do say you hurt the ones you love! Dina winced, as she acknowledged to herself the truth of what her niece had so casually stated, with the arrogant thoughtlessness of youth. Yes, most marriages were sham! Sherrie was right, Forster, one of her favourite novelists, indeed had a point: a marriage was no more a union, than a funeral was death. . . or baptism, birth. . .
Dina looked at her niece searchingly. There was something different about her. She had always considered Scherezade to be sexually attractive, as distinct from being merely beautiful. But now there was something else evident in her face, her bearing: a heightened awareness of her own sexuality. This lean stranger, with his rather forbidding mouth, his pianist's hands, and lithe grace, had awakened her favourite niece to a realization of her own potential as a woman. Sherrie was radiant - and yes, fulfilled! That was the word, thought Dina with a start. Fulfilled. Something that she, Dina, had never been.. .
. . . She thought back on her own fumbling courtship with Khurshed. Those furtive hand-holdings and tentative caresses in the last rows of the darkened movie theatres . . . the wet, inexpert kisses at her doorstep. . . that one-time bold foray inside her loose blouse, when she had slapped his hand away rather sharply . . . hadn't Banoo Maa instilled into her that sex without marriage was a sin? And caressing a breast, in those days, was 'crossing the line'! The taboo extended both above and below the waist - only the face and the midriff were exempt!
Then had come marriage . . . and the license to copulate, along with it.
That first night was a disaster! Loving and sensitive in all other respects, Khurshed's very ineptness rendered him insensitive when it came to love-making. Egged on by his macho male friends to 'make it' on the first night itself, he had forced himself awkwardly into a stiff, dry Dina, without the slightest foreplay, without arousing her at all. Sore and bleeding, Dina had taken to smearing herself with lubricants, steeling herself for the onslaught every other night, till Khurshed's passion had diminished, as did his performance . . . with the birth of Hanoz, both had all but petered away.
Paradoxically, Dina had by then got hooked on to painful sex. As Khurshed's aggression in bed waned, her desire for it increased. Developing a perverse taste for masochism, she visualized self flagellation to arouse herself to an orgasm. One night, she shocked Khurshed by assuming an almost masculine lead in their love-making,urging him to hurt her . . .
Dina winced as she recalled Khurshed recoiling from her in bed . . . then her mouth curved sarcastically . . . his maleness had been offended! Women cringed at being hurt sexually, but they bore it out of love for their men . . . they did not desire to be hurt, surely . . . !
Only one man had understood her unconventional sexual desires, her strange fantasies. . . he who had so callously betrayed her. But what a lover he had been! The more vicious and perverse his love-making, the more pleasure it had given Dina. Having realized the kink in her psychological make-up, he had skilfully used pain, in foreplay, to arouse her. . . after the unimaginative, mechanical Khurshed, sex with him was like playing variations on themes by Chopin . . . or Liszt . . . whereas with Khurshed, it was like practising the same dreary scale in the same unchanging Key in the same even tempo . . .
She felt a light touch on her arm. It was Scherezade, looking at her concernedly. Dina shook back the past and smiled at her niece. So lovely. And so young. So heartbreakingly young! Just over twenty . . .Soon to be twenty-one, Dina realized with a start. She gave an imperceptible sigh. What could one tell the young? How could one warn them? Especially Sherrie, her vibrant, impulsive Sherrie, with such reserves of passion in her . . . such a capacity for love! Whereas this fellow, obviously experienced and worldly, seemed so cold . . . with those uncomfortably penetrating eyes, those finely chiselled grim lips, that sarcastic manner of talking.
She could well understand her niece's attraction for him. He was devastatingly attractive! Dangerously intelligent too, with just the right mix of ruthlessness and tenderness. "Don't hurt her," she implored him silently. "Don't hurt my Sherrie." To Scherezade she said aloud gently, a hint of sadness in her voice, "Don't bother about others, Sherrie, do what you think best. Just one word of advice," she paused hesitantly, her hand on Scherezade's arm. Smiling a little bitterly at the inquiry in those cognac eyes, she went on, "make sure, if you can, that what you are doing is right! That it's what you really want. That you won't regret it after. . . say after ten years."
Scherezade stared at her aunt. This was the first time she had even so much as hinted that she was regretting the step she had taken, ten years ago. Scherezade knew she would not admit that to any other member of their family. Except perhaps Banoo Maa, she thought, her troubled gaze resting affectionately on the vigorous old lady, undefeated by her seventy odd years.
Banoo Maa had been waiting patiently, expectantly. She knew Dina would take her own time in coming to greet her. Nothing could ever completely sever the bond between them, both knew full well; as they also knew and recognized the fact that Dina's action in abandoning her religion for mere expediency, (at least according to Banoo Maa), had strained that bond as nothing else ever could. Had Dina really known what she was doing? Had she realized that there was no return?
"If that man wants to reconvert into a Hindu tomorrow," thought Banoo Maa resentfully, "he can do so! Especially now that his first wife is dead. But my Dina can never become a Parsee again." Once Dina had actually abandoned the Parsee Zoroastrian faith, she would never be accepted back into the fold.
Banoo Maa recalled how she had begged and pleaded with Dina. First to go back to Khurshed. Khurshed Sooneji, Dina's first husband. So much he had loved her. Loved her still! They had been so happy, thought Banoo Maa. Till that awful day. The day that little Hanoz had drowned in the swimming pool of the club. Dina had been beside herself. Blamed Khurshed for everything. To get a child after so many years of marriage, and then to allow him to drown! Khurshed had had neither the strength nor the will to defend himself, then. To explain to her that it was an accident, that it was not his negligence that had caused their child's death. For he had not been able to exonerate himself, either.
Bitter, hurtful things had been hurled by Dina at her shattered husband. After the 'Charam', the four-day ceremonies at the Tower of Silence, Dina had been unable to go home with her husband. She had gone to stay with Banoo Maa, sent her to get her clothes and stuff from an unresisting Khurshed, and had never returned to him since.
Khurshed had agreed to everything she had wanted. Even to the divorce she finally demanded.
And then she had got entangled, first with that no-good. . . (Banoo Maa muttered an unladylike swear word) and then with this fellow . . . Banoo Maa looked at Prakash resentfully. Talking to Zerxes Avari.
Banoo Maa smiled sadly to herself as Dina left Scherezade's side and walked up resolutely to her younger brother. Fredun had not been able to forgive his sister for what he considered to be her 'defection'. Fredun, who had hitherto heroine-worshipped Dina! As she was to discover, no hate is more implacable than one which has its roots in idolatry.
Ten-year old Scherezade, confused and rebellious, had ranged on her aunt's side. Her brother Firdauz, two years older than her, self-contained and phlegmatic, had remained aloof from the whole sorry business.
Banoo Maa sighed, thinking back on the turmoil the whole family had been plunged into. Prior to the marriage, Dina had informed only Banoo Maa, and had sworn her to secrecy. The rest of the family had been informed afterwards, after Dina had converted and got married by a Nikah ceremony. Fredun had not been able to forgive her anything: her conversion, her re-marriage, her secretiveness. He had insisted, in the face of Dina's defiant denials, that Dina's action affected not just her alone, but all of them. The whole family. Nothing would ever be the same again, he had thought irritably. Dina herself would never be the same again, even if she did not realize it.
The moment Dina had converted had been the turning. And not of her life alone.
Clear and unclouded in his vision, Fredun had been astounded that his sister couldn't see that. But she was gifted with a shield that had been denied to him. An impenetrable shell of hypocrisy and selfdeception, which not only justified all her actions in her own mind, but gilded them with motives of the purest altruism. She had tried unavailingly to convince Fredun that she had taken the best possible step for everybody concerned, in the circumstances.
"Everybody?" Fredun had echoed incredulously. "What of that' chap's first wife? And his children by her?" He had flung at his sister challengingly.
"Karuna has made Prakash's life a misery," Dina had answered defensively. "Turned the children against him, too! He'll have nothing more to do with them."
"You have a hope in hell," her brother had returned grimly.
And even then, the whole truth had not been told to everybody. Only Banoo Maa knew that one tragic secret. Which had completely devastated Dina. Because it had all been in vain! She could not now undo anything. She had no one to blame but herself. That was the pill that stuck in her throat, too galling to swallow!
Banoo Maa, seeing all that, had suffered helplessly for Dina. With Dina.
She found her shoulder being shaken gently. It was Fredun, looking down at her, puzzled. "Where have you got lost, Maa? I've called your name twice!" Then she looked up into his eyes and his expression changed. "Come darling," he said gently. "Dinner is served. We have to toast Shirin and Jamshed," and steered her tenderly into the dining room.
Over the three-course dinner, the hostess's capabilities were stretched to the full, trying to glean as much information as she could about their respective lives from Zerxes Avari and Prakash Sattar, both relatively unknown quantities to her. Scherezade, stifling her giggles at Zerxes' urbane sarcasm and Prakash's discouraging monosyllables, covertly studied the aunt she loved best. Dina did not look happy. No,she definitely did not look happy. She did not seem to be quite well, either.
* * * *
Back in their posh flat at Cuffe Parade, Prakash informed Dina that he would be proceeding for a short business trip in a few days. He did not look at her as he told her this. Dina would make out that he was lying, if he did so!
*
Sunday, December 14, 2008
The Turning - Chapter Three
CHAPTER THREE
Nivedita glared in exasperation at the juniper. Despite all her efforts, it insisted on growing sideways, refusing to go straight. The saleswoman at the nursery had assured her that that, in fact, added to its value, as it was rarer. But Nivedita was scornful of a market logic that placed higher value on abnormalcy. She had no stomach for irony, either!
She had been trying to work off her restlessness by pottering about in her terrace garden. Tired of pottering around, she dragged out an easy chair and flopped into it, gazing idly at the result of her labours.
The garden was flourishing: the greens were green, the flowers were blooming, the pomegranate just coming into flower. It would soon ripen into fruition.
Contentment stole into Nivedita slowly, insidiously, as she lay back in her chair enjoying her blooming garden.
What it is to be a plant in a pot, she mused. If it were watered and fed, it flourished. If neglected, it died. That was all that was required for a plant in a pot to die . . . neglect. . . nothing else . . . no overt act. No razors . . . no blood . . . no mess . . . Nivedita closed her eyes, trying to block out the images that zigzagged into her mind.
Trying to forget. . .
. . . It was Nivedita who had discovered her. Her mother, lying stained by her own blood. Her wrists slashed inexpertly; the rivulets of blood drying into snake-like cords; the bloodied razor still clutched in the feeble death-clasp. Her face frozen, the death-mask of pain and terror still etched on to it. Her eyes wide open, her empty stare an accusation . . .
Her dishevelled long hair lying tumbled on the pillow. In life, it may have looked alluring. In death, it merely added to the indignity of the kimono ridden up to the thigh, the pendulous breasts pathetically exposed: one brown nipple sticking out incongruously, making one final desperate cry in death for the attention it had not received in life. Her mouth a lipsticked slash of red, acknowledging the ultimate defeat. Or snatching the ultimate victory.
Nivedita had stood there, stunned and catatonic. Vinod had yet not returned from the hospital. The servants had left for the day. Nivedita had then quietly crumpled to the floor in a dead faint. She had lain thus until Vinod had returned and found her. . . and roused her. . . and called the family Doctor, who called the Police.
The cogs had started turning, rolling the machinery into action . . .
post-mortem . . . police inquiries . . . impertinent questions about the personal lives of their parents which they had been compelled to answer.
The police had been satisfied that it was a case of suicide. But for Nivedita, it was murder. A murder that just had to be avenged!
"You murdered her," she had told the image in her mind, lying on her bed, recovering from her fainting spell. "You murdered my mother. And you shall pay for it. I'll make you pay for it!"
The ringing of the doorbell roused her back to the present. It was her Aunt Suchitra, back from a trip to the bazaar.
"Busy with anything?" Suchitra asked her.
"Not really," she replied, listlessly.
"Then come on. Come, help me in the kitchen. I'm making some fresh khakhras. Arun told me your Dadi likes those. She is coming from Baroda tomorrow." She put her arm round her niece's shoulders, and hugged her comfortingly. "It'll be all right. It'll be all right, my dear.
Have courage!"
Nivedita roughly pushed away her aunt, crying bitterly, "That's a lie! Nothing is all right. Nothing will be all right. Not as long as she is alive!" She started sobbing, suddenly. "It's not fair! It's just not fair! Why should she be alive, and my mother dead? She stole my father, now she's killed my mother. I hate her, hate her, hate her. . ." The sobs grew more and more shattering, the voice rising to a crescendo before breaking under the burden of its own misery.
While she was debating what she should do to calm her suddenly hysterical niece, Suchitra felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Vinod, back from the lawyer's office. It appeared that their mother had died without leaving a Will. Not that she had had much to leave, anyway!
"You carry on, Maami," he told her quietly. "I'll deal with her."
Suchitra thankfully escaped, unable to quite quell an uneasy feeling about Nivedita. The girl did not appear to be quite sane about this business! True, there was the shock of finding her mother with her wrists slashed. But still . . . this obsessive hatred of that other woman!
Even now, after all these years!
Suchitra did not like it. She did not like it at all. She wished sheand Arun could get away. After all, she had hardly known Karuna or the children. The rare meetings were mainly at family functions, and you couldn't get intimate in those! Well, it was only for a few more days now, Suchitra consoled herself, shrugging off Nivedita's hysteria mentally, as she made for the kitchen.
In the living room where Suchitra had left them, brother and sister stood staring at each other. She tear-drenched, mouth moving convulsively. He, cool, calm, implacable. Just a look from him worked.
Staring at him half fearfully, half pleadingly, she gradually calmed herself into a semblance of normalcy, hoping for her usual reward. But Vinod had something else in mind for her that day. He took her by the arm and led her to her room and made her lie down on the bed. Then he went out and returned carrying a hypodermic syringe and a vial. "This will help calm you down," he said, injecting the needle into her vein, ignoring her disappointed protest at this departure from his usual therapy.
*
Nivedita glared in exasperation at the juniper. Despite all her efforts, it insisted on growing sideways, refusing to go straight. The saleswoman at the nursery had assured her that that, in fact, added to its value, as it was rarer. But Nivedita was scornful of a market logic that placed higher value on abnormalcy. She had no stomach for irony, either!
She had been trying to work off her restlessness by pottering about in her terrace garden. Tired of pottering around, she dragged out an easy chair and flopped into it, gazing idly at the result of her labours.
The garden was flourishing: the greens were green, the flowers were blooming, the pomegranate just coming into flower. It would soon ripen into fruition.
Contentment stole into Nivedita slowly, insidiously, as she lay back in her chair enjoying her blooming garden.
What it is to be a plant in a pot, she mused. If it were watered and fed, it flourished. If neglected, it died. That was all that was required for a plant in a pot to die . . . neglect. . . nothing else . . . no overt act. No razors . . . no blood . . . no mess . . . Nivedita closed her eyes, trying to block out the images that zigzagged into her mind.
Trying to forget. . .
. . . It was Nivedita who had discovered her. Her mother, lying stained by her own blood. Her wrists slashed inexpertly; the rivulets of blood drying into snake-like cords; the bloodied razor still clutched in the feeble death-clasp. Her face frozen, the death-mask of pain and terror still etched on to it. Her eyes wide open, her empty stare an accusation . . .
Her dishevelled long hair lying tumbled on the pillow. In life, it may have looked alluring. In death, it merely added to the indignity of the kimono ridden up to the thigh, the pendulous breasts pathetically exposed: one brown nipple sticking out incongruously, making one final desperate cry in death for the attention it had not received in life. Her mouth a lipsticked slash of red, acknowledging the ultimate defeat. Or snatching the ultimate victory.
Nivedita had stood there, stunned and catatonic. Vinod had yet not returned from the hospital. The servants had left for the day. Nivedita had then quietly crumpled to the floor in a dead faint. She had lain thus until Vinod had returned and found her. . . and roused her. . . and called the family Doctor, who called the Police.
The cogs had started turning, rolling the machinery into action . . .
post-mortem . . . police inquiries . . . impertinent questions about the personal lives of their parents which they had been compelled to answer.
The police had been satisfied that it was a case of suicide. But for Nivedita, it was murder. A murder that just had to be avenged!
"You murdered her," she had told the image in her mind, lying on her bed, recovering from her fainting spell. "You murdered my mother. And you shall pay for it. I'll make you pay for it!"
The ringing of the doorbell roused her back to the present. It was her Aunt Suchitra, back from a trip to the bazaar.
"Busy with anything?" Suchitra asked her.
"Not really," she replied, listlessly.
"Then come on. Come, help me in the kitchen. I'm making some fresh khakhras. Arun told me your Dadi likes those. She is coming from Baroda tomorrow." She put her arm round her niece's shoulders, and hugged her comfortingly. "It'll be all right. It'll be all right, my dear.
Have courage!"
Nivedita roughly pushed away her aunt, crying bitterly, "That's a lie! Nothing is all right. Nothing will be all right. Not as long as she is alive!" She started sobbing, suddenly. "It's not fair! It's just not fair! Why should she be alive, and my mother dead? She stole my father, now she's killed my mother. I hate her, hate her, hate her. . ." The sobs grew more and more shattering, the voice rising to a crescendo before breaking under the burden of its own misery.
While she was debating what she should do to calm her suddenly hysterical niece, Suchitra felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Vinod, back from the lawyer's office. It appeared that their mother had died without leaving a Will. Not that she had had much to leave, anyway!
"You carry on, Maami," he told her quietly. "I'll deal with her."
Suchitra thankfully escaped, unable to quite quell an uneasy feeling about Nivedita. The girl did not appear to be quite sane about this business! True, there was the shock of finding her mother with her wrists slashed. But still . . . this obsessive hatred of that other woman!
Even now, after all these years!
Suchitra did not like it. She did not like it at all. She wished sheand Arun could get away. After all, she had hardly known Karuna or the children. The rare meetings were mainly at family functions, and you couldn't get intimate in those! Well, it was only for a few more days now, Suchitra consoled herself, shrugging off Nivedita's hysteria mentally, as she made for the kitchen.
In the living room where Suchitra had left them, brother and sister stood staring at each other. She tear-drenched, mouth moving convulsively. He, cool, calm, implacable. Just a look from him worked.
Staring at him half fearfully, half pleadingly, she gradually calmed herself into a semblance of normalcy, hoping for her usual reward. But Vinod had something else in mind for her that day. He took her by the arm and led her to her room and made her lie down on the bed. Then he went out and returned carrying a hypodermic syringe and a vial. "This will help calm you down," he said, injecting the needle into her vein, ignoring her disappointed protest at this departure from his usual therapy.
*
Saturday, September 6, 2008
The Turning - Chapter Two
CHAPTER TWO
"What did you expect, that they would have welcomed you with open arms?" Dina Sattar asked her husband sarcastically. "The prodigal father returning after ten years to condole with his children on the death of their mother? His wife?"
Her tone grated harshly on his already defensive ear. Her words sliced through the layers of indifference accumulated over the years, touching a nerve that had not, as yet, been rendered insensate. He winced at the bitter, spitefully enunciated 'wife'.
Prakash knew that that had always been a sore point with Dina.
That he should have remained legally married to his first wife also.
Dina was in the position of 'wife number two', as a malicious acquaintance had commented deliberately in Dina's hearing.
Karuna had flatly refused to give her husband a divorce. Her own bed had been barren for years! She would not let him go, to spill his seed into that hoity-toity Parsee bitch!
Long hours spent with his lawyer friend had convinced Prakash that he himself had no ground for divorce. That any petition filed by him would be thrown out, probably after a long drawn out battle, into which Dina too was bound to be dragged. What better way out, than to embrace a religion that welcomed proselytism and permitted four wives?
He looked rather anxiously at Dina. At the hard, almost bitter lines that marred her once attractive face. The years had worked their stamp on her, though she was still attractive at forty-eight, in a hard, haggard fashion. The thin lips had acquired a bitter, closed-in look, even in repose. The eyes too often held a haunted look. As though she had been trapped into something she now wanted to get out of. At any cost. . . to anybody. . . except herself.
Prakash wondered, as he often had in the past few years, if they had done the right thing ten years ago. With a sudden, unaccustomed perception, he realized why she was so particularly bitter today. Today was their tenth Wedding Anniversary. And he had not even wished her! Ten years of marriage to Dina . . . and his first wife had begun the day by slashing her wrists . . . he had celebrated the tenth Anniversary of his second marriage by attending the funeral of his first wife. It was an irony he did not have the stomach for.
Prakash was tired. He felt trapped in the web of his own making.
The guilt of proselytism gnawed deeper into his flesh with the passing years. A yearning to return to the faith he was bred in struggled for fulfillment with a violence he was compelled to suppress.
And now this! Nivedita's denunciation. The final rejection by his own flesh and blood. Alien! That was what his children had become to him. Alien. He almost hated Dina in that moment. If only. . . he caught himself on the thought, horrified by the depth of his own bitterness, and cast a resentful look at Dina.
She caught the look. And gave a caricature of a smile, as she intuitively divined his thoughts. He wished her dead! He dared not risk the scandal of a divorce, a 'talaq', right now! Dina was well aware that the new Finance Minister had advised Prakash against taking her with him to official functions. His business depended too heavily on the goodwill of politicians, for such advice to be ignored.
That several politicians depended on Prakash's 'goodwill', financially, was a matter they themselves preferred to ignore! And Prakash had made his fortune too quickly, too precariously, to rock the boat. One could never tell, in these unpredictable times, just whose survival would be threatened by a scandal!
Prakash averted his eyes, embarrassed. "I didn't expect to be welcomed with open arms," he blundered into speech. "I thought they would be pleased to see me, after all this time," he faltered, not needing Dina's contemptuous smile to tell him how inane he sounded. This paradox had persisted all through his second marriage. The successful, confident businessman reduced to a defensive, guilt-ridden husband at home.
They completed their meal in silence and almost immediately retired to their bedrooms. The connecting door had not been opened in a long, long time. Resentment can fuel the sexual drive only in the very young.
Dina desultorily flicked a few pages of the novel she was reading before laying it down, ultimately tired of the pretense of reading. Her thoughts strayed to her divorced husband, Khurshed. If he died, would she be tempted to attend his funeral? Would she be allowed to? The thought entered her mind unbidden. Unwelcome.
Suddenly, Dina sat up in bed with something of a shock. This was a thought she had always deliberately blocked out from her mind. Now it impinged itself upon her consciousness inexorably.
"What will happen to you when you die?" The voice inside taunted her.
Feeling claustrophobic, Dina got off the bed and walked up to the open window, taking deep gulps of air.
"Don't do it, Dina . . . . Don't. 'Tis a sin you are committing," her Banoo Maa had pleaded, horrified when she had disclosed to her what she was going to do.
"You're being narrow minded, Maa," she had asserted with the bravado of the insecure. "After all, all religions are the same."
"Then how come you had never thought of changing your religion, till now?" had asked that shrewd lady, then in her sixties. Banoo Kanga, her mother's sister, was the only mother Dina had ever known. As had her sister Shirin and brother Fredun.
"Admit it to yourself, at least, if not to me," the old lady had said, in a last ditch effort to try and get Dina to change her mind. "This sudden urge for conversion is only so you'll be able to 'marry' this man. If you can call it marriage at all!"
"You don't understand, Maa! I have to get married to him!" She had then confided in Banoo Maa her reason, her desperation, her exhilaration.
Dina closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. "Banoo Maa, Banoo Maa," she despaired. "Why didn't you stop me? Surely you must have guessed how it would be?"
The first traumatic shock shortly after the marriage. The feeling of being utterly bereft. And then the feeling of being imposed upon. The distrust and the hostility of his children by his first wife. The neveracknowledged, ever-present guilt where Karuna was concerned. Poisoning everything including their sex life. Especially their sex life! The differences and misunderstandings that were stifled and repressed till they ossified into implacable hatred. The corrosion that set in, eating into her every time the name of her Prophet automatically came to her lips. Not being able to go to the Fire temple or the Doongerwadi. After that disastrous incident, when an old friend had asked curiously why she was sitting outside with the non-Parsees instead of inside the bungli, she had stopped going altogether.
Yes, the end had been present in the beginning itself. Banoo Maa had seen that. Wise old Banoo Maa. If only she had!
The poison had been eating into her entire psyche gradually, almost imperceptibly changing her. She had of late seen that reflected in the faces of her relatives. . . her beloved Banoo Maa . . . her brother and his family . . . her cherished niece . . . her elder sister and her husband . . . Thinking of Shirin, she frowned in annoyance. She and Prakash would have to go over to Shirin and Jamshed's, the day after tomorrow. It was their thirtieth Wedding Anniversary. And her family had always been scrupulous in inviting her and Prakash to all their functions! Her pride forced her to attend, pretending a gaiety she did not feel, in the face of those covert, speculative stares, just waiting for her composure and her marriage to crack.
Only her niece had understood. Always. Stood up for her, been her sole outspoken champion. Her darling little Scherezade! Though Dina wasn't comfortable about that fellow Sherrie was involved with.
Dina turned away from the window. As so often in the past, her eyes wandered to the bottle of sleeping tablets lying on her bedside table. And lingered there. And then the spectre raised itself again.
"What will happen to you when you die?"
Trying to shut the thought out of her mind, Dina opened the door leading to the balcony and walked out. The balcony ran the length of the outer side of the flat, overlooking the sea. Casting a swift glance at the door of Prakash's bedroom next to hers, she was relieved to find it shut. His air-conditioner was on. Prakash couldn't sleep without the AC, whereas Dina preferred open windows and fresh air.
She leant her arms on the balcony railing and struggled to relax her tense body, feeling the shroud of the night close in upon her. The moon was a sliver of silvery sickle. Twenty stories below, the inky waters of the Arabian Sea rippled with the compulsion of gravity. Dina gazed fascinated at the neon lights reflected in the sluggishly undulating waters. The fingers of fear crept towards her once more. Relentlessly, with a gravity of their own that she could do nothing to repulse.
Dina shuddered, trying to overcome the feeling of someone having walked over her grave.
What would it be like for her? A hurriedly dug up grave, unsanctified by the prayers of the Faithful? The chanting of the Parsee Priests, she could forget about! She was bitterly aware that none of her relatives would even try to give her a Parsee funeral at the Tower of Silence. Except perhaps her Sherrie. But she would not succeed. She could not succeed! Not in the face of the disapproval of her own parents. Not against the intransigent orthodoxy of the Priests who would not allow it, if they knew of Dina's conversion. And somebody from among her relatives was bound to spill the beans, she thought, grimacing.
Her fingers closed on the cold hard railing of the balcony till the bones of her palms pressed painfully against the unyielding metal. It had started drizzling.
Dina went back into her bedroom, gulped two sleeping tablets and lay down, imploring oblivion to her aid.
*
"What did you expect, that they would have welcomed you with open arms?" Dina Sattar asked her husband sarcastically. "The prodigal father returning after ten years to condole with his children on the death of their mother? His wife?"
Her tone grated harshly on his already defensive ear. Her words sliced through the layers of indifference accumulated over the years, touching a nerve that had not, as yet, been rendered insensate. He winced at the bitter, spitefully enunciated 'wife'.
Prakash knew that that had always been a sore point with Dina.
That he should have remained legally married to his first wife also.
Dina was in the position of 'wife number two', as a malicious acquaintance had commented deliberately in Dina's hearing.
Karuna had flatly refused to give her husband a divorce. Her own bed had been barren for years! She would not let him go, to spill his seed into that hoity-toity Parsee bitch!
Long hours spent with his lawyer friend had convinced Prakash that he himself had no ground for divorce. That any petition filed by him would be thrown out, probably after a long drawn out battle, into which Dina too was bound to be dragged. What better way out, than to embrace a religion that welcomed proselytism and permitted four wives?
He looked rather anxiously at Dina. At the hard, almost bitter lines that marred her once attractive face. The years had worked their stamp on her, though she was still attractive at forty-eight, in a hard, haggard fashion. The thin lips had acquired a bitter, closed-in look, even in repose. The eyes too often held a haunted look. As though she had been trapped into something she now wanted to get out of. At any cost. . . to anybody. . . except herself.
Prakash wondered, as he often had in the past few years, if they had done the right thing ten years ago. With a sudden, unaccustomed perception, he realized why she was so particularly bitter today. Today was their tenth Wedding Anniversary. And he had not even wished her! Ten years of marriage to Dina . . . and his first wife had begun the day by slashing her wrists . . . he had celebrated the tenth Anniversary of his second marriage by attending the funeral of his first wife. It was an irony he did not have the stomach for.
Prakash was tired. He felt trapped in the web of his own making.
The guilt of proselytism gnawed deeper into his flesh with the passing years. A yearning to return to the faith he was bred in struggled for fulfillment with a violence he was compelled to suppress.
And now this! Nivedita's denunciation. The final rejection by his own flesh and blood. Alien! That was what his children had become to him. Alien. He almost hated Dina in that moment. If only. . . he caught himself on the thought, horrified by the depth of his own bitterness, and cast a resentful look at Dina.
She caught the look. And gave a caricature of a smile, as she intuitively divined his thoughts. He wished her dead! He dared not risk the scandal of a divorce, a 'talaq', right now! Dina was well aware that the new Finance Minister had advised Prakash against taking her with him to official functions. His business depended too heavily on the goodwill of politicians, for such advice to be ignored.
That several politicians depended on Prakash's 'goodwill', financially, was a matter they themselves preferred to ignore! And Prakash had made his fortune too quickly, too precariously, to rock the boat. One could never tell, in these unpredictable times, just whose survival would be threatened by a scandal!
Prakash averted his eyes, embarrassed. "I didn't expect to be welcomed with open arms," he blundered into speech. "I thought they would be pleased to see me, after all this time," he faltered, not needing Dina's contemptuous smile to tell him how inane he sounded. This paradox had persisted all through his second marriage. The successful, confident businessman reduced to a defensive, guilt-ridden husband at home.
They completed their meal in silence and almost immediately retired to their bedrooms. The connecting door had not been opened in a long, long time. Resentment can fuel the sexual drive only in the very young.
Dina desultorily flicked a few pages of the novel she was reading before laying it down, ultimately tired of the pretense of reading. Her thoughts strayed to her divorced husband, Khurshed. If he died, would she be tempted to attend his funeral? Would she be allowed to? The thought entered her mind unbidden. Unwelcome.
Suddenly, Dina sat up in bed with something of a shock. This was a thought she had always deliberately blocked out from her mind. Now it impinged itself upon her consciousness inexorably.
"What will happen to you when you die?" The voice inside taunted her.
Feeling claustrophobic, Dina got off the bed and walked up to the open window, taking deep gulps of air.
"Don't do it, Dina . . . . Don't. 'Tis a sin you are committing," her Banoo Maa had pleaded, horrified when she had disclosed to her what she was going to do.
"You're being narrow minded, Maa," she had asserted with the bravado of the insecure. "After all, all religions are the same."
"Then how come you had never thought of changing your religion, till now?" had asked that shrewd lady, then in her sixties. Banoo Kanga, her mother's sister, was the only mother Dina had ever known. As had her sister Shirin and brother Fredun.
"Admit it to yourself, at least, if not to me," the old lady had said, in a last ditch effort to try and get Dina to change her mind. "This sudden urge for conversion is only so you'll be able to 'marry' this man. If you can call it marriage at all!"
"You don't understand, Maa! I have to get married to him!" She had then confided in Banoo Maa her reason, her desperation, her exhilaration.
Dina closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. "Banoo Maa, Banoo Maa," she despaired. "Why didn't you stop me? Surely you must have guessed how it would be?"
The first traumatic shock shortly after the marriage. The feeling of being utterly bereft. And then the feeling of being imposed upon. The distrust and the hostility of his children by his first wife. The neveracknowledged, ever-present guilt where Karuna was concerned. Poisoning everything including their sex life. Especially their sex life! The differences and misunderstandings that were stifled and repressed till they ossified into implacable hatred. The corrosion that set in, eating into her every time the name of her Prophet automatically came to her lips. Not being able to go to the Fire temple or the Doongerwadi. After that disastrous incident, when an old friend had asked curiously why she was sitting outside with the non-Parsees instead of inside the bungli, she had stopped going altogether.
Yes, the end had been present in the beginning itself. Banoo Maa had seen that. Wise old Banoo Maa. If only she had!
The poison had been eating into her entire psyche gradually, almost imperceptibly changing her. She had of late seen that reflected in the faces of her relatives. . . her beloved Banoo Maa . . . her brother and his family . . . her cherished niece . . . her elder sister and her husband . . . Thinking of Shirin, she frowned in annoyance. She and Prakash would have to go over to Shirin and Jamshed's, the day after tomorrow. It was their thirtieth Wedding Anniversary. And her family had always been scrupulous in inviting her and Prakash to all their functions! Her pride forced her to attend, pretending a gaiety she did not feel, in the face of those covert, speculative stares, just waiting for her composure and her marriage to crack.
Only her niece had understood. Always. Stood up for her, been her sole outspoken champion. Her darling little Scherezade! Though Dina wasn't comfortable about that fellow Sherrie was involved with.
Dina turned away from the window. As so often in the past, her eyes wandered to the bottle of sleeping tablets lying on her bedside table. And lingered there. And then the spectre raised itself again.
"What will happen to you when you die?"
Trying to shut the thought out of her mind, Dina opened the door leading to the balcony and walked out. The balcony ran the length of the outer side of the flat, overlooking the sea. Casting a swift glance at the door of Prakash's bedroom next to hers, she was relieved to find it shut. His air-conditioner was on. Prakash couldn't sleep without the AC, whereas Dina preferred open windows and fresh air.
She leant her arms on the balcony railing and struggled to relax her tense body, feeling the shroud of the night close in upon her. The moon was a sliver of silvery sickle. Twenty stories below, the inky waters of the Arabian Sea rippled with the compulsion of gravity. Dina gazed fascinated at the neon lights reflected in the sluggishly undulating waters. The fingers of fear crept towards her once more. Relentlessly, with a gravity of their own that she could do nothing to repulse.
Dina shuddered, trying to overcome the feeling of someone having walked over her grave.
What would it be like for her? A hurriedly dug up grave, unsanctified by the prayers of the Faithful? The chanting of the Parsee Priests, she could forget about! She was bitterly aware that none of her relatives would even try to give her a Parsee funeral at the Tower of Silence. Except perhaps her Sherrie. But she would not succeed. She could not succeed! Not in the face of the disapproval of her own parents. Not against the intransigent orthodoxy of the Priests who would not allow it, if they knew of Dina's conversion. And somebody from among her relatives was bound to spill the beans, she thought, grimacing.
Her fingers closed on the cold hard railing of the balcony till the bones of her palms pressed painfully against the unyielding metal. It had started drizzling.
Dina went back into her bedroom, gulped two sleeping tablets and lay down, imploring oblivion to her aid.
*
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
The Turning - Chapter One
June 13, 1994
The last of the mourners had left, and brother and sister at last had the house to themselves. Except for their mother's brother and his wife, who had come over from Calcutta and would be staying with them till at least the twelfth day ceremonies were over; and their cousin, their father's eldest brother's son, Sunil.
Arun Khanna poured himself his third cup of coffee in the last about fifteen minutes. He badly wanted a drink, but somehow felt awkward to ask his nephew for one. Vinod seemed even more unnaturally detached than he remembered. As for Nivedita ... he looked at her uneasily. Then his eyes met his wife's and he gave her a slight, reassuring smile. Sunil looked at his watch pointedly a few times, then announced pompously that he'd be taking his leave. He had a busy day ahead of him!
Arun Khanna glanced at him amusedly. "Going to the factory, Sunil?"
Sunil looked up defensively. His small workshop, where he manufactured hair-dye, of all things, was a bit of a joke in the family. Only Vinod took some interest in it from time to time, dropping in at the workshop off and on. It was quite close by, just across the street. And Vinod was quite friendly with Sunil, who minted a lot of money thanks to the universal human desire to combat overt manifestations of the ageing process. He ignored Arun, nodded to Vinod, and made good his escape.
Suchitra Khanna was determinedly trying to engage Nivedita in low-voiced conversation, not seeming to be put off by the monosyllabic responses of her niece. Arun took this opportunity to move closer to his nephew, who was standing by himself, now that Sunil had left.
"She seems all right now," began Arun tentatively, in a low voice.
"But don't you think you should give her something? To calm her
nerves, y’know!”
Vinod looked across at Nivedita. She’ll be Okay,” he said curtly.
“You honestly think so? After that exhibition?” persisted Arun, his voice reflecting a tinge of distaste.
“She’s a bit overwrought at Mama’s suicide. You can’t blame her for going a it berserk when Father turned up at the funeral!”
I can understand her resentment towards your father. After all, your mother was my only sister. But need Nivedita have washed all that family linen at the funeral, in front of everyone? I had no inkling of what was coming, when she saw Prakash, and suddenly let fly!”
“She’s never been able to get over Father deserting Mama, changing his religion to be able to marry that other woman,” said Vinod, his tone expressionless. “When he suddenly turned up at Mama’s funeral, after all these years, she took his presence here at such a time as an insult to Mama’s memory.”
As Arun looked rather doubtful, Vinod went on, “You see, she’s always blamed Dina for everything. For Father leaving Mama, his leaving us, his conversion ... that is something Nivedita has never been able to understand or forgive. His conversion somehow muddled up Nivedita’s own psyche, her own sense of identity. And now, she blames Dina for Mama’s suicide.”
“But surely Karuna’s suicide could have had nothing to do with Prakash leaving her for Dina, years ago?
“You can never tell,” said Vinod, adding thoughtfully, “It was this day, ten years ago,. That Father left us to get married to another woman. Mama had always refused to talk about either Father or Dina. But she has never been the same, since. I don’t think she ever forgave either of them. Nivedita realized that. That’s why over the years she has worked herself up to a morbid hatred for them both. Especially Dina. It’s become a sort of an obsession with her.”
“Haven’t you and Nivedita kept in touch with Prakash after he married again?”
“For both Mama and Nivedita, he was dead.”
“And you?” asked Arun curiously.
Vinod shrugged. “I haven’t really bothered, one way or another. He’s been sending the monthly cheques to me - `guilt money’, Nivedita calls it – as Mama refused to accept anything sent in her name.”
“Is the amount adequate?”
“Quite,” shrugged Vinod. The gesture conveyed the dissatisfaction the word tried to cover. “In these last ten years he has become a very rich man, you know! And quite an important one.” He couldn’t help adding, “Dina’s a lucky woman!”
*
The last of the mourners had left, and brother and sister at last had the house to themselves. Except for their mother's brother and his wife, who had come over from Calcutta and would be staying with them till at least the twelfth day ceremonies were over; and their cousin, their father's eldest brother's son, Sunil.
Arun Khanna poured himself his third cup of coffee in the last about fifteen minutes. He badly wanted a drink, but somehow felt awkward to ask his nephew for one. Vinod seemed even more unnaturally detached than he remembered. As for Nivedita ... he looked at her uneasily. Then his eyes met his wife's and he gave her a slight, reassuring smile. Sunil looked at his watch pointedly a few times, then announced pompously that he'd be taking his leave. He had a busy day ahead of him!
Arun Khanna glanced at him amusedly. "Going to the factory, Sunil?"
Sunil looked up defensively. His small workshop, where he manufactured hair-dye, of all things, was a bit of a joke in the family. Only Vinod took some interest in it from time to time, dropping in at the workshop off and on. It was quite close by, just across the street. And Vinod was quite friendly with Sunil, who minted a lot of money thanks to the universal human desire to combat overt manifestations of the ageing process. He ignored Arun, nodded to Vinod, and made good his escape.
Suchitra Khanna was determinedly trying to engage Nivedita in low-voiced conversation, not seeming to be put off by the monosyllabic responses of her niece. Arun took this opportunity to move closer to his nephew, who was standing by himself, now that Sunil had left.
"She seems all right now," began Arun tentatively, in a low voice.
"But don't you think you should give her something? To calm her
nerves, y’know!”
Vinod looked across at Nivedita. She’ll be Okay,” he said curtly.
“You honestly think so? After that exhibition?” persisted Arun, his voice reflecting a tinge of distaste.
“She’s a bit overwrought at Mama’s suicide. You can’t blame her for going a it berserk when Father turned up at the funeral!”
I can understand her resentment towards your father. After all, your mother was my only sister. But need Nivedita have washed all that family linen at the funeral, in front of everyone? I had no inkling of what was coming, when she saw Prakash, and suddenly let fly!”
“She’s never been able to get over Father deserting Mama, changing his religion to be able to marry that other woman,” said Vinod, his tone expressionless. “When he suddenly turned up at Mama’s funeral, after all these years, she took his presence here at such a time as an insult to Mama’s memory.”
As Arun looked rather doubtful, Vinod went on, “You see, she’s always blamed Dina for everything. For Father leaving Mama, his leaving us, his conversion ... that is something Nivedita has never been able to understand or forgive. His conversion somehow muddled up Nivedita’s own psyche, her own sense of identity. And now, she blames Dina for Mama’s suicide.”
“But surely Karuna’s suicide could have had nothing to do with Prakash leaving her for Dina, years ago?
“You can never tell,” said Vinod, adding thoughtfully, “It was this day, ten years ago,. That Father left us to get married to another woman. Mama had always refused to talk about either Father or Dina. But she has never been the same, since. I don’t think she ever forgave either of them. Nivedita realized that. That’s why over the years she has worked herself up to a morbid hatred for them both. Especially Dina. It’s become a sort of an obsession with her.”
“Haven’t you and Nivedita kept in touch with Prakash after he married again?”
“For both Mama and Nivedita, he was dead.”
“And you?” asked Arun curiously.
Vinod shrugged. “I haven’t really bothered, one way or another. He’s been sending the monthly cheques to me - `guilt money’, Nivedita calls it – as Mama refused to accept anything sent in her name.”
“Is the amount adequate?”
“Quite,” shrugged Vinod. The gesture conveyed the dissatisfaction the word tried to cover. “In these last ten years he has become a very rich man, you know! And quite an important one.” He couldn’t help adding, “Dina’s a lucky woman!”
*
Thursday, August 28, 2008
THE TURNING - Prologue
June 8, 1984.
The incessant rain, which normally aroused pleasurable emotions in her, today was an added source of annoyance for Nivedita.
Like everything else that was happening. Like her brother's casual attitude, his nonchalant shrugging of shoulders wherever she tried to raise that topic with him.
Like her father's sudden intransigence, which would not permit him to even disucss the matter with his hitherto beloved daughter.
Like her mother's air of martyrdom, resigning herself to what she considered was her fate.
Like the pattering of the rain outside on the mosaic-tiled terrace, flooding her precious pots of roses.
Irrelevantly Nivedita acknowledged, in some stratum of her consciousness, that the monsoon that year had caught her napping. That she had not taken the precaution of mixing sand in her rose pots in time.
Drainage, after all, was the important thing where roses were concerned. The excess water could not be allowed to collect, else it would putrefy the roots. Drainage. That was so important! How could she have forgotten?
"Day dreaming again, sis?" Vinod Shahane's voice roused her out of her abstraction.
"Bhaiyya ... do something ... talk to Papa ... don't let him go through with this!" Clutching at his hand and gripping it tight, almost convulsively.
"There's nothing you or I can do," said Vinod shortly, detaching his hand. "It's his life and he should be left free to do what he wants with it."
Resentful of the rejection she thought she sensed, Nivedita rose and started pacing about the room agitatedly, all arms and legs, her awkward adolescent figure almost ungainly in its agitation. Vinod watched her, strangely detached. Curious thing, hysteria ... he thought ... and the attendant compulsions that nourished it, nurtured it. As he watched, she put both her hands on the nape of her slender white neck and pushed up the heavy swathe of black hair in a gesture at once despairing and provocative.
Vinod's eyes narrowed. Probably for the first time, he really noiced her for what she was. An adolescent with a strangely potent sexual promise. Her uncontrolled agitation somehow enhanced the raw sensuality latent within her - the wide curve of the long lip cleaving towards the slash of the high cheekbones; the heavy lids dropping over the elongated slanting eyes veiling depths of passion within; the thin wiry body awakening to its own compulsions. His eyes roved over her young limbs, holding the promise of feline grace beneath their adolescent awkwardness.
Her voice intruded. Resentful. Petulant. "Is he so besotted with her that he can't think what this will do to us? All of us? To mother?" she demanded, the last a trifle belatedly.
"It happends, you know," Vinod ventured, trying to placate.
"What happends?" Nivedita's slanting eyes widened a ther brother's acceptance of the unacceptable. "What happens? This?" Her voice shrilled on the verge of hysteria, her words running into each other. "He must become a Muslim? Just beacuase Mama won't give him a divorce? What'll become of us? What'll we do? Where will we be? ... Hindu children of a Muslim father?!"
Vinod frowned. That aspect of the matter had not struck him. Then he shrugged. Hell, what did it matter? His thirteen-year old sister, a good twelve years younger than him, took things too much to heart.
"This business is going to be the death of her," he thought to himself, with sudden foreboding.
****
June 13, 1984.
At exactly 10.30 am, Prakash Shahane, born and bred a Hindu, married Dina Soneji, born and bred a Parsee, by a Nikah ceremony. After they had both converted into Islam and Prakash had changed his name to `Sattar' in an imagined compromise between the two faiths. That marriage was unusual in more ways than one: it contained within itself, the genesis of murder.
****
Prakash had done what he had to do, undeterred by his wife's sullen silences or his daughter's wan looks. He left early in the morning, before the rest of the family had risen.
Karuna, awakening in a bed bereft of her husband, remained closeted in the room she had shared with him till that tday, shutting the world out. Including her children. Especially her children! They reminded her of him.
Vinod went to the hospital as usual. Nivedita sat on the terrace and worked out in her mind what she wanted to do. What she had to do. Hatred for the unknown Dina had turned into an obsessin. The maid, Shantabai, came looking for her. To get her ready for school. Nivedita surprised her by getting into her uniform docilely and going off.
In the evening, Nivedita deliberately missed her school bus and took the publisc BEST bus home. She got off at the Church on her way back home and bought a wax figurine from the vendors outside.
She had always a fascination for the Church. She would listen avidly to her Catholic friends when they spoke of the mysterious `Box' into which they disappeared, to confess their misdemeanours and be absolved of their sins. Nivedita was seduced by this benign God who apaprently granted absolution for the mere confessing. As yet, she knew nothing of penitence.
Her simplistic perception was fostered by her particular friend, Shirley. Shirley had a deep rooted hatred for the Maths teacher who had once caned Shirley's bottom in front of the whole class as a punishment for cheating from her neighbour. Shirley had told Nivedita that Ms. Savant was soon going to die. Met with hesitant disbelief, Shirley triumphantly produced a smnall wax figurine, stuck with several pins.
"See, this is Ms. Savant. If you keep poking pins into her, she'll die!" she announced gleefully.
"But this is wax! It will melt after some time," objected Nivedita, anxious to find a pin-prick in her friend's plan for Ms. Savant's early demise.
"No, it won't, you dumbo," was the scornful answer. "And even if it does start to melt, I'll get another wax figure to stick pins into. You must keep on at it," she informed Nivedita ghoulishly.
Nivedita was more than receptive. Shirley's words not only took root, they germinated in her disordered mind. Fascinated as she was by the concept of guilt and its expiation, Nivedita was even more fascinated by the possibility of getting rid of the despised Dina by a process so innocuous as sticking pins into a wax figurine. The day her father left to get married to Dina, the idea flowered into a desire for experimentation.
Taht night in the privacy of her room, Nivedita set up the figurine on a crudely built pedestal of black pleistocene, mumbled some prayers and viciously stuck a pin into the figurine. Then she hid the figurine outside on the terrace, under some loose rocks in the rock garden she had so painstakingly made.
She followed this practice faithfully ever since, on the thirteenth of June every year. And the pins multiplied.
****
The year Nivedita turned fifteen, Vinod caught her at it. Foung her hiding the figurine in the rock garden. Outraged, he dragged her from the terrace into his room and locked the door. Then he stripped her of her skirt, pulled her over his knee and began thrashing her backside, causing her enough pain to drag out yelps of protest from time to time.
After a while, however, the pain gave way to a newer sensation in Nivedita, finding is echo in Vinod. The hard slaps of their own volition smoothed into a quite different touch ... and his desire to punish was overwhelmed by a more elemental desire, rising to fulfill the girl's awakening need ... his roving hand aroused her to a pitch beyond herself. Nivedita yielded to him, not fully realizing what she was doing, yet past caring of the consequences. Some of the ache inside her seemed to diminish, overwhelmed by the physical pain that Vinod was causing her ... a welcome pain, blinding her to all else but her initiation at the hands of her brother, her demi-God ... and the blood that spurted from her virgin hymen was symbolic to her disturbed mind ... like that from a sacrificial cockerel, at the altar of a heathen rite ...
This would now become part of her ritual with the figurine. and it would be their secret ... hers and Vinod's ... their very own secret!
Savouring this second delicious secret of her young life, Nivedita was prepared to share the first, with a suddenly approachable elder brother who seemed to accept her compulsive need to find a physical, tangible outlet for her feelings towards Dina.
Her ritual with the figurines continued. Her death-wish gained in strength, crystallizing into a tangible objective.
*
The incessant rain, which normally aroused pleasurable emotions in her, today was an added source of annoyance for Nivedita.
Like everything else that was happening. Like her brother's casual attitude, his nonchalant shrugging of shoulders wherever she tried to raise that topic with him.
Like her father's sudden intransigence, which would not permit him to even disucss the matter with his hitherto beloved daughter.
Like her mother's air of martyrdom, resigning herself to what she considered was her fate.
Like the pattering of the rain outside on the mosaic-tiled terrace, flooding her precious pots of roses.
Irrelevantly Nivedita acknowledged, in some stratum of her consciousness, that the monsoon that year had caught her napping. That she had not taken the precaution of mixing sand in her rose pots in time.
Drainage, after all, was the important thing where roses were concerned. The excess water could not be allowed to collect, else it would putrefy the roots. Drainage. That was so important! How could she have forgotten?
"Day dreaming again, sis?" Vinod Shahane's voice roused her out of her abstraction.
"Bhaiyya ... do something ... talk to Papa ... don't let him go through with this!" Clutching at his hand and gripping it tight, almost convulsively.
"There's nothing you or I can do," said Vinod shortly, detaching his hand. "It's his life and he should be left free to do what he wants with it."
Resentful of the rejection she thought she sensed, Nivedita rose and started pacing about the room agitatedly, all arms and legs, her awkward adolescent figure almost ungainly in its agitation. Vinod watched her, strangely detached. Curious thing, hysteria ... he thought ... and the attendant compulsions that nourished it, nurtured it. As he watched, she put both her hands on the nape of her slender white neck and pushed up the heavy swathe of black hair in a gesture at once despairing and provocative.
Vinod's eyes narrowed. Probably for the first time, he really noiced her for what she was. An adolescent with a strangely potent sexual promise. Her uncontrolled agitation somehow enhanced the raw sensuality latent within her - the wide curve of the long lip cleaving towards the slash of the high cheekbones; the heavy lids dropping over the elongated slanting eyes veiling depths of passion within; the thin wiry body awakening to its own compulsions. His eyes roved over her young limbs, holding the promise of feline grace beneath their adolescent awkwardness.
Her voice intruded. Resentful. Petulant. "Is he so besotted with her that he can't think what this will do to us? All of us? To mother?" she demanded, the last a trifle belatedly.
"It happends, you know," Vinod ventured, trying to placate.
"What happends?" Nivedita's slanting eyes widened a ther brother's acceptance of the unacceptable. "What happens? This?" Her voice shrilled on the verge of hysteria, her words running into each other. "He must become a Muslim? Just beacuase Mama won't give him a divorce? What'll become of us? What'll we do? Where will we be? ... Hindu children of a Muslim father?!"
Vinod frowned. That aspect of the matter had not struck him. Then he shrugged. Hell, what did it matter? His thirteen-year old sister, a good twelve years younger than him, took things too much to heart.
"This business is going to be the death of her," he thought to himself, with sudden foreboding.
****
June 13, 1984.
At exactly 10.30 am, Prakash Shahane, born and bred a Hindu, married Dina Soneji, born and bred a Parsee, by a Nikah ceremony. After they had both converted into Islam and Prakash had changed his name to `Sattar' in an imagined compromise between the two faiths. That marriage was unusual in more ways than one: it contained within itself, the genesis of murder.
****
Prakash had done what he had to do, undeterred by his wife's sullen silences or his daughter's wan looks. He left early in the morning, before the rest of the family had risen.
Karuna, awakening in a bed bereft of her husband, remained closeted in the room she had shared with him till that tday, shutting the world out. Including her children. Especially her children! They reminded her of him.
Vinod went to the hospital as usual. Nivedita sat on the terrace and worked out in her mind what she wanted to do. What she had to do. Hatred for the unknown Dina had turned into an obsessin. The maid, Shantabai, came looking for her. To get her ready for school. Nivedita surprised her by getting into her uniform docilely and going off.
In the evening, Nivedita deliberately missed her school bus and took the publisc BEST bus home. She got off at the Church on her way back home and bought a wax figurine from the vendors outside.
She had always a fascination for the Church. She would listen avidly to her Catholic friends when they spoke of the mysterious `Box' into which they disappeared, to confess their misdemeanours and be absolved of their sins. Nivedita was seduced by this benign God who apaprently granted absolution for the mere confessing. As yet, she knew nothing of penitence.
Her simplistic perception was fostered by her particular friend, Shirley. Shirley had a deep rooted hatred for the Maths teacher who had once caned Shirley's bottom in front of the whole class as a punishment for cheating from her neighbour. Shirley had told Nivedita that Ms. Savant was soon going to die. Met with hesitant disbelief, Shirley triumphantly produced a smnall wax figurine, stuck with several pins.
"See, this is Ms. Savant. If you keep poking pins into her, she'll die!" she announced gleefully.
"But this is wax! It will melt after some time," objected Nivedita, anxious to find a pin-prick in her friend's plan for Ms. Savant's early demise.
"No, it won't, you dumbo," was the scornful answer. "And even if it does start to melt, I'll get another wax figure to stick pins into. You must keep on at it," she informed Nivedita ghoulishly.
Nivedita was more than receptive. Shirley's words not only took root, they germinated in her disordered mind. Fascinated as she was by the concept of guilt and its expiation, Nivedita was even more fascinated by the possibility of getting rid of the despised Dina by a process so innocuous as sticking pins into a wax figurine. The day her father left to get married to Dina, the idea flowered into a desire for experimentation.
Taht night in the privacy of her room, Nivedita set up the figurine on a crudely built pedestal of black pleistocene, mumbled some prayers and viciously stuck a pin into the figurine. Then she hid the figurine outside on the terrace, under some loose rocks in the rock garden she had so painstakingly made.
She followed this practice faithfully ever since, on the thirteenth of June every year. And the pins multiplied.
****
The year Nivedita turned fifteen, Vinod caught her at it. Foung her hiding the figurine in the rock garden. Outraged, he dragged her from the terrace into his room and locked the door. Then he stripped her of her skirt, pulled her over his knee and began thrashing her backside, causing her enough pain to drag out yelps of protest from time to time.
After a while, however, the pain gave way to a newer sensation in Nivedita, finding is echo in Vinod. The hard slaps of their own volition smoothed into a quite different touch ... and his desire to punish was overwhelmed by a more elemental desire, rising to fulfill the girl's awakening need ... his roving hand aroused her to a pitch beyond herself. Nivedita yielded to him, not fully realizing what she was doing, yet past caring of the consequences. Some of the ache inside her seemed to diminish, overwhelmed by the physical pain that Vinod was causing her ... a welcome pain, blinding her to all else but her initiation at the hands of her brother, her demi-God ... and the blood that spurted from her virgin hymen was symbolic to her disturbed mind ... like that from a sacrificial cockerel, at the altar of a heathen rite ...
This would now become part of her ritual with the figurine. and it would be their secret ... hers and Vinod's ... their very own secret!
Savouring this second delicious secret of her young life, Nivedita was prepared to share the first, with a suddenly approachable elder brother who seemed to accept her compulsive need to find a physical, tangible outlet for her feelings towards Dina.
Her ritual with the figurines continued. Her death-wish gained in strength, crystallizing into a tangible objective.
*
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Crime Novel
Hi!
Some of you may have read my first crime novel, `The Turning' ... but many may have not, sicne distribution, for several reasons, was largely concentrated in Bombay ...
Posting novel shortly, chapter by chapter ...
hope you enjoy ...
Some of you may have read my first crime novel, `The Turning' ... but many may have not, sicne distribution, for several reasons, was largely concentrated in Bombay ...
Posting novel shortly, chapter by chapter ...
hope you enjoy ...
Monday, August 25, 2008
BLOOMERANG
BLOOMERANG
“May you burn in hell,” he’d cursed his daughter’s unknown murderer, gazing agonized into the lovely young face contorted by brutal death.
He hadn’t cried since he was eight years old, when tears of pain and anger and humiliation had been wrung out of him by the vicious beating his father had meted out to him. He was now fifty-two and he couldn’t stop the tears coursing down his cheeks as he stood staring at the corpse of his daughter. His only child.
He couldn’t tear his eyes from the sight he could hardly bear. His nineteen year-old daughter, once so lovely and graceful, now rendered graceless, almost grotesque by the peculiar indignity of a certain kind of death: her face horribly contorted, ugly bruises on her slender neck. As the significance of those bruises sunk in slowly, he raised his hands in a curious gesture suggestive of a helpless amazement at the machinations of fate and gazed at the Inspector, his eyes asking the question his tongue could not utter.
“Yes, we are afraid so,” Inspector Menon responded rather awkwardly, answering the unspoken question in the tortured man’s eyes. “It was murder, no doubt. She’s been strangled.” Trying to speak sympathetically, he sounded merely brusque. Hell, there was never an easy way of doing this, Ashir Menon thought to himself. Poor chap. This has really knocked him out.
It had. His daughter meant more to him than anyone in the world, almost including himself. If he overreached himself sometimes in his businesses, it was for her sake. To give her the kind of childhood and adolescence that had been denied to him. To smother her in every luxury she desired. And to buy her love and respect and admiration. She was part of him after all, and hence the sole recipient of his unconditional love.
His creation. Now destroyed.
He would suffer, the man who had done this to her, he promised himself. He would make him suffer agonies beyond Hell. Whoever he was, the man responsible for Dipannita’s death.
“May you die a thousand living deaths,” he enunciated slowly and clearly, to the added unease of the policemen in the morgue. “May you burn in hell and continue to burn for eternity,” he cursed.
*
The news had been brought to him within rather less than a half an hour of reaching his house, straight from the airport after his business trip to the Middle East. He had barely finished his cup of tea when the doorbell rang, ushering the two policemen, bringing with them the news of the death of his daughter. They had not said anything more at the house, in the presence of his wife and mother.
It had not really registered, not for quite some time. His tired eyes had flickered round the room, taking in the figures arrayed like some ghastly tableau in a surrealistic play --- the carefully expressionless face of his wife as she stood rigid and catatonic --- his mother, who let forth an unearthly ululation --- his weeping servants, the Maharaj making a particularly loud racket --- and the two slightly embarrassed cops who had come with the news.
On being asked if he would accompany them to the morgue for the purpose of official identification, he made a futile gesture, and then walked out of the room, out of the house, followed by the policemen. It had not occurred to him to say a word to his wife, to even ask her if she’d like to accompany him.
Of course she wouldn’t! Women were to be spared such horrors. There were some decisions meant for men to take. The premise had served them both well, he was sure, all through the years of their marriage. Why make a departure now, in the midst of such a crisis? His mother was bound to wail, of course. Women of her generation always did, when confronted by death or disaster. As for him . . . as for Bhavik Chaudhary . . . he could not even begin to gauge the depths of his devastation. Dipannita’s death, to him, meant the negation of his own life. Whatever remained now was gall and wormwood.
* * *
It happened as she passed under the jambul tree. Something plonked on her head, even as that ubiquitous chattering song assaulted her ears yet again. She’d find the bird now, she was determined. It was in that tree --- it had to be! She looked up, standing as still as possible under the fruit-laden tree. Plonk! There it fell, again. But this time it just missed her head. It was a jambul. Her eyes followed the trembling branch and she found herself looking into two brown eyes, deep and still as forest pools.
She stared, fascinated, as the squirrel plucked a jambul, held it between its forepaws, and nibbled it as delicately as a Victorian debutante at the Vicarage Tea Party.
Then plonk! The fruit all consumed, the seed dropped nonchalantly. Not on her head this time, though.
So that’s one mystery solved, she mused as she sauntered along almost jauntily, invigorated by the delicious air --- the smell of the rain-watered earth --- the cool nip in the breeze --- and, of course, the birdsong, now a solo aria, then a sharp counterpoint, yet again a soaring, full-throated orchestral symphony. Maheshwar was at its gorgeous best right now, at the tail end of the monsoon. The vegetation was lush, wildflowers there were aplenty, and the Karvi was in full bloom, a portent signifying some momentous happening.
The season had not yet begun, so the hillstation was mercifully as yet free of the hordes that would descend on it in the next two weeks. And he would arrive tomorrow, she told herself, happily. Pity she’d had to fib to her parents --- given them some gup about going with college friends to Patang. She’d given Rashida’s name of course. There was nobody at her place right now, so no one would know.
She was staying at the hotel under an assumed name. Funny how difficult it could be, to think up a name on the spur of the moment. The idea had occurred to her at the last minute, and had seemed a good one. Even more adventurous! For a moment she’d wondered what name to put down. Then her gaze had fallen upon the edit page of The Chronicle, which the clerk slapped down on the reception table when she approached. The famous byline caught her eye. Why not assume that identity? She’d pass off, she was fair enough!
It had gone smoothly enough. The receptionist had looked rather admiring, when she’d given him the name. It gave her a cachet, that name! Of being someone famous! She’d already warned him on telephone He’d be here tomorrow, also staying at the same hotel. That’s why she’d decided on this long walk, today. She enjoyed walking in the forest, but he didn’t.
She was walking along a muddy trail, away from the main road, through a fairly dense wood. She came again to that faint, intriguing trail she had noticed on her way to the market. To the left of the kachha path, a shortcut to the hotel away from the main road, rose a sudden, steep incline. There was this faint trail snaking up the incline, beneath the jambuls and the oaks, leading probably to the top of the hill. It seemed to be an interesting trail, worth following, with a sparkling rill bubbling past. The forest floor was covered with dense undergrowth. She could distinguish the delicate fronds of the maidenhair and the silver fern, and the white and green hoods of the cobra lily punctuating the path like so many magnified commas. The trees were covered with trailing moss and epiphytic ferns, brushing her face and arms with ghostly caresses.
She took a couple of tentative steps up the trail, glancing at her watch. It was still just about 10 in the morning. She negotiated a sudden sharp bend and looked up to see where the trail was leading her. It was then that she noticed the boundary wall just about visible over the tops of the trees where the hill had plateau’d out. Almost like the rampart of some ancient castle or manor house, she told herself, hastening her ascent in excitement.
She came to a green-painted wicket gate standing slightly ajar in half-hearted invitation. Dipannita opened it wider and walked into the compound. Inside was a two-storied structure, of quite charming design. Rather sprawling, covering a considerable area, with detached outhouses. The gardens were nicely laid out, if not imaginatively planned.
The scent of magnolia assailed her sensitive nostrils. A little away from the main building, the boundary wall seemed to give way, curving downwards. She walked towards the curve as though impelled, and found steps leading down into what seemed to be a sunken garden. The scent of the Magnolia grew stronger. Yes, she caught sight of a branch --- two branches actually, one bearing pinkish white flowers, and the other flaunting blooms of gold, both entwined into each other. The shrubs must be planted very close, she thought idly, breathing deep, her eyes closed.
“Looking for someone?”
The brusque voice, sounding almost in her ear, made her jump. Literally. She swung round sharply to face her interrogator, and was annoyed to find herself swaying on her feet. A hand reached out and gripped her soft upper arm.
Her sudden clumsy movement had made her drop her bag. As she tried to retrieve it, the press button that held the flap burst open, scattering some of her belongings on the ground. He immediately bent and picked them up, before she could . . . a compact, her wallet, her room-key which she had retained with her, a lipstick . . .
She shoved the stuff back into her bag, higgledy-piggledy, with a murmur of thanks. She secured her bag and looked up at him. He seemed decent enough, if a bit rough-hewn. Mid-fortyish, stocky, solidly built. Dark glittering eyes under beetling brows, a bushy black beard trying to subdue full, somewhat coarse lips. His voice was at variance with his appearance, thought Dipannita. More educated than he appeared to be.
“Sorry about all this,” she said awkwardly, startled into being on the defensive. “I am . . . I was . . . on my way to my hotel, when I came across this trail and . . . I wondered where it led . . .” she trailed off.
“Where are you staying?” he asked . “Which hotel?”
“Hotel Windcliffe .”
“That’s some distance from here. And quite isolated. Have you lost your way?” he seemed concerned.
“N.n.no …. No, but … am I trespassing?” she asked apologetically, wondering who the hell this chap was. He was definitely not one of the owners of this fairly grand-looking place. Clothes and appearance all wrong, she naively told herself. Even if he sounded educated. Was he the caretaker? He seemed a cut above the usual caretaker-type. Maybe an estate manager or steward or something, she thought doubtfully. She lived in a world where such things were not quite unheard of.
The man did not enlighten her. And something in his demeanour, in his gaze, precluded her from asking him the questions she was dying to. Like what was this place? A private residence? Rather a large, rambling place. It had an Atmosphere. Whom did it belong to? Were the owners around? Could she look around a bit?
“Would you like to look around a bit?”
“Yes, please, if I’m not trespassing?”
“You are not . . . not if I invite you.” Those words should have been accompanied by a smile. But weren’t. It struck her that he had perhaps forgotten how to smile.
“What’s down there?” she asked, pointing to the flight of steps.
“A holy place.” The word sounded strange on his lips.
“A garden?”
“Indeed! Watered by holy water straight from the Gaumukh. Come.”
She followed him, intrigued. Water from ‘Gaumukh’ in the Sahyadris?
The stone staircase was spiral, and the steps slippery with moss and lichen. He let her go first, and came close behind her, his arm once more grasping her bare upper arm. An involuntary thrill coursed through her. She stiffened. The fingers bit more deeply.
She went down gingerly. A light drizzle had started, bringing a slight nip into the atmosphere, redolent with the heady perfume of the magnolia and the jasmine. As they neared the bottom of the steps, the garden slowly came into view. Apart from the magnolia, and the jasmine and the jui, and several ferns and climbers, there were shrubs of night jasmine, which would flower only after sunset. Lilies and crocus sprung up at random in the tall grass.
Dipannita rounded the last bend, descended the last step, and caught sight of it --- the `water from Gaumukh’! And she laughed aloud. It was a spout in the shape of a cow’s head, probably connected to an underground spring, from which issued forth a stream of water. She ventured closer, and found the stream fell into a kind of a well. She leaned to look into the well. And she screamed.
*
At the precise moment that Dipannita caught sight of the boundary wall of her imagined castle in Maheshwar, an elderly man entered the Colaba Police Station, about 200 km. away, in the city of Bombay, to report a murder. A rather unusual murder. That of a beggar who seemed to be sort of stationed a short distance from the Taj Hotel. A mutilated creature. Armless. Right from the shoulder downwards. Both arms, Ramramram! A sorry looking specimen, the elderly gent told the Sr. Police Inspector, one wondered why anybody should bother to kill him, but killed he was, in cold blood, apparently. Stabbed! That too in broad daylight! What was the world coming to, for shame! Of course, these ruddy beggars were a nuisance and a pain, and should be got rid of, but not stabbed to death! What were the police doing nowadays, the elderly man muttered. Time was …
How did he notice? Well, on Tuesdays, he always gave alms to at least one beggar. Eased his conscience, somewhat. They were a nuisance, of course, whining and dirtying the roads and pawing decent people who themselves could barely make both ends meet in these hard days, but well, they too had to live, he supposed, and he wouldn’t miss a couple of rupees each week, would he?
Well, here was this poor chap, his head sagging on his chest. He thought he’d give him some money. It was when he bent to drop some coins into the tin can that hung on his chest, suspended by a tin wire round his neck, that he noticed the red stain. It took him just a moment to realize that the poor devil was dead. Of course, he knew better than to touch him. Blood and all. Of course he knew it’d be a police case! Why, he wouldn’t have touched the chap even if he hadn’t been so damned stinking filthy!
Yes yes, of course he would take the Inspector to the spot. He’d be late for his lunch, and his wife would be waiting for him, but well, duty called, didn’t it? He’d never been one to shirk his duty, No Sir! Hadn’t he come to inform the police? Going out of his way too, when all those younger men, good-for-nothing rascals, most of them, just stood round gawking and making lewd comments, no respect for death, not enough gumption to go to the Police . . .
By this time they had reached the dead body. Even the young rascals had disappeared. There were one or two curious lookers-on, and a young, well-dressed woman who was arguing with her male friend that something should surely be done, while the friend was trying to haul her away, assuring her it was no use getting mixed up in something like that, only a waste of time, and who knew what the cops would do, and who the hell was bothered, it was only some armless beggar anyway, who was probably better off dead. Why, he doubted if the poor devil could have risen up off the pavement without help. He wondered how he had managed to eat and drink and stay alive even that long!
At first sight he appeared to be dozing, his great shaggy head lolling on his chest. SI Pereira squatted by the dead man. Without touching him. He was stabbed all right. Not much external bleeding, just a slight red on the left side of his chest. Almost obscured by the tin can, but not quite. The murderer had known what he was about. The classic stab point was chosen. Probably a thin, very sharp blade.
“Was there any weapon lying around, Mr. Gupta?” Senior Inspector Geoffrey Pereira felt foolish even as he asked the question. He knew, of course, what the answer would be. But the question had to be asked.
No, he had seen no weapon, asserted Gupta. And of course, he had looked around for one, before going off to fetch the police. He had that much common sense, after all! Even if he hadn’t read so many detective novels, he’d have known enough, to look for the murder weapon.
Hiding a grin, Pereira reassured him, telling him he was an excellent witness --- just the kind of informant the Police prayed for. “And I only hope the pompous windbag doesn’t haunt the Station now,” he had muttered savagely to his Sub-Inspector later on.
*
It was the topic of discussion at Rashne’s party. Her article in ‘The Chronicle’.
“Absolutely thrilling, Sharmeen! Where did you get all those gory details?”
“ Too too gruesome, darling! Do such things really happen? I mean --- it’s worse than watching Ramsay brothers or whatever!”
“You mean you actually watch that tripe . . . ?”
“Hey Sharm, you’d better be careful, or you’ll have some of the Beggar Mafia gunning for your lovely neck. Better get some police protection. What say, Rashne? Where’s that cousin of yours?”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind police protection myself, if personally provided by Arshan.”
“What am I supposed to provide, and to whom?” The tall, lean man, who’d seemed to Sharmeen to be a bit out of place at the party came up, glass in one hand, and put his free arm round Rashne. So he was Rashne’s famous Police Commissioner cousin! Deputy Commissioner, she corrected herself mentally.
Rashne laughingly introduced them --- “Sharmeen Turel . . . Arshan Chinoy. Sharmeen is a free-lance journalist, Arsh. And her beat is crime … or should I say passion! She refuses to touch Society stuff. She’s after real dangerous stuff, like underworld dons and nasty slumlords, and her latest pet hate, the Beggar Mafia. Did you read her article in yesterday’s Chronicle?”
Deputy Commissioner Chinoy grinned sheepishly. “You know I don’t have time to read the papers, Rash! Nothing except the comics! Anyway, you’re bursting to tell me all about it.”
“Well, it’s pretty interesting, in a way. And I do think someone should investigate further. I mean the Police absolutely must do something about it!” Knowing his cousin of old, Arshan waited patiently . . .
Everybody knew, of course, that there was some kind of racket going on --- there were these Mafiosi, controlling beggars --- it was they who ran the racket, housing the beggars, placing them in strategic spots in the city, rotating them if thought fit, teaching them the tricks of the trade, making a fortune from money given to these wretched dregs of humanity as alms. That’s why quite a few people in Bombay stopped giving money to beggars. God knows who really benefitted!
Sharmeen’s story, however, had a different, quite horrifying angle, Rashne informed her cousin in thrilling tones. Sharmeen said people actually ran this as a sort of business, and `manufactured’ beggars --- by deliberately well, blinding people, or …or mutilating them. Could anybody be so depraved and cruel? Children kidnapped and `made suitable’ for begging! Sharmeen was sure there was some kind of base where these Beggar Mafia operated from. And that there was some head honcho who pulled the strings from behind the scenes. She felt if only the cops took some trouble, they would unearth these chaps and bust the racket. What did Arshan think? After all, he was the Deputy Commissioner, Crime Branch! Couldn’t he do something?
“Perhaps. But I’ll have to interrogate Ms. Turel, first.” The mocking eyes quizzed Sharmeen under raised brows.
“Oh, for God’s sake call her `Sharmeen’” Rashne said irritably.
She didn’t know quite how it came about, but Sharmeen found herself being dropped home by Arshan after the party. He too lived in Bandra, and she hadn’t taken her car. It was a hell of a hassle, getting parking space on Peddar Road in the evening.
After essaying `Commissioner Chinoy’ a couple of times and thinking she sounded silly, she switched to Arshan without his invitation. He was too savvy to let her know just how interested in her he was, in so brief a meeting. Actually, he knew quite a bit about Ms. Sharmeen Turel. He had read her article. Not only this recent one, but also most of the stuff she’d written. Had long admired the way she wrote. And what she wrote.
Her articles, especially her investigative pieces, had caused considerable comment in the top echelons of the Police. And now, in certain quarters, there was fear that she was attracting attention from dangerous quarters. Just recently they’d had a tip-off that some very undesirable types were keeping a close watch on Sharmeen Turel’s movements. Arshan had come to this blessed party only because Rashne had let drop that Sharmeen Turel would be there. He had wanted to meet her informally, socially, if possible.
He’d had no idea what she looked like. She did not permit her photograph to embellish her columns. She’d turned out to be a stunner. Not strictly beautiful, but an amazingly interesting face. He was in danger all right.
They talked mostly about her article. He admitted he had read it. He felt she had a point. But he also felt, quite seriously, that she was indeed courting danger. Especially after she revealed to him how often she had stood about in the streets at night, alone, around some beggar or the other, waiting for him to be approached by what she termed his (or her, of course), `minder’. Then she’d try and follow them if she could without doing it too obviously. He heard her out gravely. Then asked her if her efforts had met with any success.
“Have you really managed to follow these chaps? Discovered anything?” His voice was stern all of a sudden, the face grim, the brow furrowed.
“Silly little idiot,” he thought to himself. “She seems determined to rush in where any sane person would hesitate to tread. Does she not realize what they’d do to her if ever they got an inkling of what she was up to? And writing articles under her own name, on top of that. Damn fool woman,” he raged inwardly, even as he could not help admiring her guts. And her resourcefulness.
For Sharmeen was resourceful, all right. She had come pretty close to her objective. And she was determined, not to give up now. She knew the area where the hideout was, she was sure. A hillstation, not too far from Bombay, But she couldn‘t pinpoint the exact location, the actual spot.
“You’d better tell me what you’ve discovered,” he told her grimly, as she kept silent.
“Want me to do your job for you, Commissioner?” The delicious voice held more than a tinge of mockery.
Notorious for biting sarcasm himself, he was nonetheless in no mood to appreciate hers. His hands clenched on the steering wheel. He’d have shaken her hard had he not been driving, and never mind whether he had any right to do so or not. This girl was a calamity! To herself, above all.
Sharmeen grinned to herself in the darkness. She had some inkling of what her companion was feeling and thinking, and was glad. She knew she’d need police help to really succeed in what she hoped to do. Bust the Beggar Mafia.
She had reached a crucial point in this particular investigation, which was fast becoming an obsession with her. She was leaving for Maheshwar on Monday morning, the day after, (tomorrow, really! It was almost Sunday) to do a bit of a recce there. She had lost that van she’d been following, somewhere in the marketplace of that hill-station, when her own car had struck a puncture. She was pretty certain that that was where the Beggar Mafia had some kind of a hide-out --- somewhere in or around Maheshwar. Or even Patang, which was a sort of a satellite hill-station, famous for its boarding schools. If she did indeed find anything, she’d need back-up, and swift action. Also someone to SOS to, if she ran into any danger. She was bound to, she thought fatalistically. She’d often felt she herself was being followed or observed, even while she herself was doing the following or the observing. This was much too big to handle on her own. She’d need reinforcements. Meeting this chap at this juncture could well be a blessing. Why not exploit it? He was definitely intrigued, if not smitten. She knew the signs.
As he brought the car to a halt outside the building where she lived, she turned to him, placing a seemingly impulsive hand on his arm. “Will you help me, Arshan?” she asked.
“Get out,” was the cold, uncompromising response. “I’m seeing you to your flat,” he added in a tone that brooked no protest, parking the car and getting out himself.
*
In their opulent flat at Napean Sea Road, barely a 15-minute drive from Rashne’s place, the Chaudhary family was at dinner, en famille for once, at around the same time that Sharmeen’s article was being discussed at Rashne’s party. It was indeed a rare occasion when the Head of the family managed to get home in time for Dinner. The bahu, Sudha, had long since given up trying to assemble the family together at meal times. Caught between her mother-in-law’s interfering dominance and her husband’s general indifference to matters domestic, she took the line of least resistance. Even her daughter, thoroughly spoilt by Bhavik, and alternately indulged and bullied by Maaji, was totally out of her control.
So Sudha had taken refuge in God. Her days were filled with prayer and devotion. She visited temples, held Poojas for every conceivable occasion, good or bad, gave alms to priests and the poor, and prostrated herself at the feet of every visiting Guru or Maharaj. For the Maharaj that ruled her own kitchen, however, she reserved a quite different form of devotion.
Even before the rice was brought to the table, the dinner was interrupted by the trilling of Bhavik’s mobile, which lay on the side of his thali. It was his ‘special’ mobile, reserved for very special people and very urgent messages. Which he carried even to the loo. Since he had not made love to his own wife in the last five years, Sudha had no idea if he kept it on in bed, permitting its ubiquitous intrusion even into that most private of intimacies.
Maaji clucked and Dipannita sighed, as Bhavik rose and walked out of the room, the mobile glued to his ear. He was back in a couple of minutes, frowning heavily.
“What’s happened, beta? Any bad news?”
“Just a bit of nuisance,” he answered his mother.
“What nuisance,” she would not be put off so easily.
“One of our trucks, carrying rather valuable cargo, has been overturned on the ghats. They wanted to know what to do.” He looked at his wife. “I’ll have to leave, in an hour or so. See to my packing, will you? Enough clothes and stuff for a couple of days.”
“But Papa, you’re going to the Middle-East, shortly,” protested Dipannita.
“Yes, gudiya, but that’s next week. I’ll be back before then.”
“Well, if you don’t come back by Wednesday, I’ll have left myself.”
“Yes, you’re off with your college friends, aren’t you? To that hill-station?”
“Patang.”
“Oh! Yes of course. You’re going to Patang. Will you be staying there only, or are you moving around?”
“Oh no, we’ll be in Patang only. Rashida’s younger brother is in school there, and they’ll have half-term while we’re there. So we’ll be visiting the school, and maybe taking walks, and generally chilling out.”
“Let’s see, it’s Saturday today. Oh, of course I’ll be back by Wednesday. I’ll make sure I am,” he assured her.
“You’d better be,” she waved her fork at him mock-threateningly. He ruffled her hair caressingly and rose from the table, his mind already on this latest mishap and how to overcome it. It was worrisome. Hmmn … it was definitely worrisome!
Maaji clucked again. Bhavik was really spoiling the child. Had she dared to do that to her father, she’d have had her knuckles well rapped. But Bhavik would not let anyone so much as touch that girl in anger. The only time she, Maaji, had tried to physically chastise Dipannita for her own good, Bhavik, on hearing of it from his daughter, had flown into a rage with his mother, warning her never again to dare raise her hand or take a cane to Dipannita. Sudha herself had never dared, knowing her husband’s almost violently obsessive love for their only child.
Behind her light-hearted badinage, Dipannita’s mind was churning with speculation. Her father ran a recruiting business. Recruiting unskilled labour from UP and Bihar, and other such places and got them jobs in the Middle East.
“That’s the business to be in ---labour! No dearth of raw material for that, in this country. Too much population, mostly ignorant and illiterate, easy to handle and manage,” she’d heard him once expound to a group of friends, who’d come over for drinks and cards.
What did a truck in the ghats have to do with recruiting business? wondered Dipannita. Most of the labourers came by train, from Bihar or UP. She knew, her father did organize transport and stuff for his recruits. Maybe he was getting people from other places, now. She had heard rumours that times were bad, and that Gulf jobs were getting scarcer, the Middle-Eastern governments getting stricter. Maybe even labour was hard to get. Luckily, her father’s agency or whatever seemed to be thriving. There was no shortage of money in the Chaudhary household. She herself had only to express a desire to have it instantly gratified by her adoring Dad. Oh well, maybe he had some other business she knew nothing about, she shrugged. Not that she knew much about his businesses, anyway.
She forgot all about the truck on the ghats, and thought pleasurably about her own projected trip.
* * *
Sharmeen returned to the Hotel Windcliffe late evening, dead tired. It was the same day that Dipannita had discovered `Gaumukh’ in Maheshwar.
Sharmeen had registered as Avan Fraser. Arshan had insisted on that. As he’d insisted on her carrying the mobile he gave her, with a special roaming facility.
“You take this, keep it with you always, and keep it on”, he’d ordered. Noticing the spark of mutiny in her fine dark eyes he’d added grimly, “You either promise you’ll do as you’re told and take proper precautions, or I’ll take you into protective custody. And enjoy doing it,” he assured her. They’d met at her flat again on Sunday, to work out all the details of her trip to Maheshwar.
Sharmeen returned to the hotel to find cops swarming round the place, and the hotel manager in a state of near apoplexy. And, amazingly, astoundingly, to find Arshan Chinoy there. He seemed to be the cause of the manager’s apoplexy!
He noticed her as soon as she walked into the reception area. But he made no move towards her. He was looking grim as hell. She wondered what was up. About to go up to him, she noticed, on the sofa, the body covered in white sheet up to the face. As though impelled, she walked up to it. It was a young face. Once a pretty face. Now grotesque. Seemed to have been strangled.
Despite herself, she swayed. And found her arm caught in a hard grip which was oddly reassuring. It managed to convey strength and anger and reassurance and comfort, all at once. She leaned her head against his shoulder. “What’s happened? Who . . . who is she?”
“Sharmeen Turel.” The mockery in his voice was bitter.
Tears suddenly sprang into her eyes as she turned to look up at him, horror mingling with hurt reproach. In that moment he realized how vulnerable she could be. He was ashamed of his bitter tongue. He put his arm around her and hugged her slightly. “That was the name she’s registered under. Lord knows why. Her real name is Dipannita Chaudhary. At least that’s what all credit cards in her wallet indicate!”
She was stunned. “But . . . why did she . . . how . . . I suppose she’d read it in some paper?” He nodded. A killing thought struck her. She clutched the hand resting on her shoulder. “Arshan . . . this means . . .”
“. . . Someone wanted to kill you, but killed her instead, thinking she was you,” he completed for her. “That’s why I came racing down. Made it in three hours, from Bombay. The news received there was that `Sharmeen Turel’ had been found, murdered. By the time I reached here, Inspector Mahadik here had searched her room and discovered her real identity.”
His tone told her what his words did not. Part of his anger had been due to anxiety. But oh God, what a mess. And this girl, this poor, poor girl!
“Come,” said Arshan, clasping her hand. “I’ll take you to your room. Pack up. I’m taking you back to Bombay. We’ve made arrangements for the body to be taken to Bombay. I’ll depute some chaps to go to her folks once we find out where she lives. I’m sure the address given here is bogus, but she seems to be from Bombay, all right."
“If she’s been killed instead of me,” Sharmeen said huskily, looking straight into Arshan’s eyes, “there could only be one reason . . . that I’m right, and that hide-out is somewhere here.”
“Yes, I’d gathered that,” he said dryly. “Instructions have been given --- for a discreet but thorough search of every likely place in Maheshwar. If need be, even the unlikely ones --- then they’ll move to Patang. I’m taking no chances, now. This gang just has to be busted, and the ringleader caught. We’ll have a detailed talk later, in Bombay.”
She knew what that meant, of course. She was now in greater danger than ever. He’d probably insist on police protection for her. Oh well, she’d think about it later. Right now, she could not rid her mind of the thought that another young girl, a much younger girl, had been killed for her sake --- instead of her! It was bitter gall to swallow, for someone so sensitive as Sharmeen.
* * *
The Constable on duty brought Bhavik a cup of tea. He choked on the very first sip. He tried to compose himself. He could see they were waiting to ask him some questions. He must help them. Help them catch this bastard, who’d done this to his daughter.
He’d been told that she was found, strangled, in the gardens of some hotel in Maheshwar. So she’d lied about going to Patang. Not that it mattered now. Nothing mattered. Except to avenge her murder.
“I don’t understand . . . my daughter . . . why should anyone . . . was there any . . . was there . . . ?”
“Yes, Mr. Chaudhary, we are afraid so,” Inspector Menon cut in swiftly. Of course, we yet have to do the PM, but preliminary examination by the Medical Officer does show evidence of rape. Probably shortly before she was killed.”
“There’s perhaps one thing you could help us with, sir,” continued the Inspector. “Something that’s been bothering us a great deal.”
Bhavik looked at him in dumb inquiry.
“Did your daughter know a lady called Sharmeen Turel?”
Bhavik’s face had turned even more ashen. “W..why do you ask that, Inspector?” He asked, a tremor in his voice.
“Because for some reason, your daughter had assumed that name, when she registered herself at Hotel Windcliffe, in Maheshwar. She told the hotel clerk her name was Sharmeen Turel. And that was the name she was known by, at that hotel. . . . Mr. Chaudhary? Mr. Chaudhary? Are you all right, Mr. Chaudhary? Get a glass of water, quickly,” the Inspector ordered the Constable on duty, as Chaudhary seemed to visibly shrink, guttural, keening sounds emitting from his lips.
That conversation . . . that fatal telephone conversation, just a day before he was to leave for the Gulf . . . after Dipannita had left . . .
“Bahadur speaking Boss, from Gaumukh. We’ve found out who’s been snitching on us, Boss. It’s that haramkhor Malloo, whose arms we took off last month. Necessary steps will be taken, Boss. We’ll make an example of him.”
“Good,” he’d said. Well, he couldn’t have people snitching, in his business, could he? They’d have to set an example!
“More good news, Boss, we’ve also located that dame . . . that Sharmeen Turel, who’s been troubling us. She’s here right now, at Maheshwar, in Hotel Windcliffe. Go ahead, Boss?”
“Yes, dammit,” he’d snapped into the phone. “Finish her off. Khatam kar dalo, saali ko. But listen, her body must be found. If she disappears, there’ll be a search. We don’t want that. But finish her off as soon as possible.”
“Will do, Boss! She’s some babe, though! You’d have enjoyed her, Boss. Er, mind if . . .”
“Do what you like with her, the bitch,” he’d laughed crudely. “Have your fun, but finish her off. I’m off to Muscat, tomorrow. I want a full report when I return.”
The full report. He’d got it all right.
He stood frozen, gazing blankly at the sympathetic Inspector, as flames flickered all around him, leaping higher and higher, engulfing him till he was burning in Hell.
XXXX____________________XXXX
“May you burn in hell,” he’d cursed his daughter’s unknown murderer, gazing agonized into the lovely young face contorted by brutal death.
He hadn’t cried since he was eight years old, when tears of pain and anger and humiliation had been wrung out of him by the vicious beating his father had meted out to him. He was now fifty-two and he couldn’t stop the tears coursing down his cheeks as he stood staring at the corpse of his daughter. His only child.
He couldn’t tear his eyes from the sight he could hardly bear. His nineteen year-old daughter, once so lovely and graceful, now rendered graceless, almost grotesque by the peculiar indignity of a certain kind of death: her face horribly contorted, ugly bruises on her slender neck. As the significance of those bruises sunk in slowly, he raised his hands in a curious gesture suggestive of a helpless amazement at the machinations of fate and gazed at the Inspector, his eyes asking the question his tongue could not utter.
“Yes, we are afraid so,” Inspector Menon responded rather awkwardly, answering the unspoken question in the tortured man’s eyes. “It was murder, no doubt. She’s been strangled.” Trying to speak sympathetically, he sounded merely brusque. Hell, there was never an easy way of doing this, Ashir Menon thought to himself. Poor chap. This has really knocked him out.
It had. His daughter meant more to him than anyone in the world, almost including himself. If he overreached himself sometimes in his businesses, it was for her sake. To give her the kind of childhood and adolescence that had been denied to him. To smother her in every luxury she desired. And to buy her love and respect and admiration. She was part of him after all, and hence the sole recipient of his unconditional love.
His creation. Now destroyed.
He would suffer, the man who had done this to her, he promised himself. He would make him suffer agonies beyond Hell. Whoever he was, the man responsible for Dipannita’s death.
“May you die a thousand living deaths,” he enunciated slowly and clearly, to the added unease of the policemen in the morgue. “May you burn in hell and continue to burn for eternity,” he cursed.
*
The news had been brought to him within rather less than a half an hour of reaching his house, straight from the airport after his business trip to the Middle East. He had barely finished his cup of tea when the doorbell rang, ushering the two policemen, bringing with them the news of the death of his daughter. They had not said anything more at the house, in the presence of his wife and mother.
It had not really registered, not for quite some time. His tired eyes had flickered round the room, taking in the figures arrayed like some ghastly tableau in a surrealistic play --- the carefully expressionless face of his wife as she stood rigid and catatonic --- his mother, who let forth an unearthly ululation --- his weeping servants, the Maharaj making a particularly loud racket --- and the two slightly embarrassed cops who had come with the news.
On being asked if he would accompany them to the morgue for the purpose of official identification, he made a futile gesture, and then walked out of the room, out of the house, followed by the policemen. It had not occurred to him to say a word to his wife, to even ask her if she’d like to accompany him.
Of course she wouldn’t! Women were to be spared such horrors. There were some decisions meant for men to take. The premise had served them both well, he was sure, all through the years of their marriage. Why make a departure now, in the midst of such a crisis? His mother was bound to wail, of course. Women of her generation always did, when confronted by death or disaster. As for him . . . as for Bhavik Chaudhary . . . he could not even begin to gauge the depths of his devastation. Dipannita’s death, to him, meant the negation of his own life. Whatever remained now was gall and wormwood.
* * *
It happened as she passed under the jambul tree. Something plonked on her head, even as that ubiquitous chattering song assaulted her ears yet again. She’d find the bird now, she was determined. It was in that tree --- it had to be! She looked up, standing as still as possible under the fruit-laden tree. Plonk! There it fell, again. But this time it just missed her head. It was a jambul. Her eyes followed the trembling branch and she found herself looking into two brown eyes, deep and still as forest pools.
She stared, fascinated, as the squirrel plucked a jambul, held it between its forepaws, and nibbled it as delicately as a Victorian debutante at the Vicarage Tea Party.
Then plonk! The fruit all consumed, the seed dropped nonchalantly. Not on her head this time, though.
So that’s one mystery solved, she mused as she sauntered along almost jauntily, invigorated by the delicious air --- the smell of the rain-watered earth --- the cool nip in the breeze --- and, of course, the birdsong, now a solo aria, then a sharp counterpoint, yet again a soaring, full-throated orchestral symphony. Maheshwar was at its gorgeous best right now, at the tail end of the monsoon. The vegetation was lush, wildflowers there were aplenty, and the Karvi was in full bloom, a portent signifying some momentous happening.
The season had not yet begun, so the hillstation was mercifully as yet free of the hordes that would descend on it in the next two weeks. And he would arrive tomorrow, she told herself, happily. Pity she’d had to fib to her parents --- given them some gup about going with college friends to Patang. She’d given Rashida’s name of course. There was nobody at her place right now, so no one would know.
She was staying at the hotel under an assumed name. Funny how difficult it could be, to think up a name on the spur of the moment. The idea had occurred to her at the last minute, and had seemed a good one. Even more adventurous! For a moment she’d wondered what name to put down. Then her gaze had fallen upon the edit page of The Chronicle, which the clerk slapped down on the reception table when she approached. The famous byline caught her eye. Why not assume that identity? She’d pass off, she was fair enough!
It had gone smoothly enough. The receptionist had looked rather admiring, when she’d given him the name. It gave her a cachet, that name! Of being someone famous! She’d already warned him on telephone He’d be here tomorrow, also staying at the same hotel. That’s why she’d decided on this long walk, today. She enjoyed walking in the forest, but he didn’t.
She was walking along a muddy trail, away from the main road, through a fairly dense wood. She came again to that faint, intriguing trail she had noticed on her way to the market. To the left of the kachha path, a shortcut to the hotel away from the main road, rose a sudden, steep incline. There was this faint trail snaking up the incline, beneath the jambuls and the oaks, leading probably to the top of the hill. It seemed to be an interesting trail, worth following, with a sparkling rill bubbling past. The forest floor was covered with dense undergrowth. She could distinguish the delicate fronds of the maidenhair and the silver fern, and the white and green hoods of the cobra lily punctuating the path like so many magnified commas. The trees were covered with trailing moss and epiphytic ferns, brushing her face and arms with ghostly caresses.
She took a couple of tentative steps up the trail, glancing at her watch. It was still just about 10 in the morning. She negotiated a sudden sharp bend and looked up to see where the trail was leading her. It was then that she noticed the boundary wall just about visible over the tops of the trees where the hill had plateau’d out. Almost like the rampart of some ancient castle or manor house, she told herself, hastening her ascent in excitement.
She came to a green-painted wicket gate standing slightly ajar in half-hearted invitation. Dipannita opened it wider and walked into the compound. Inside was a two-storied structure, of quite charming design. Rather sprawling, covering a considerable area, with detached outhouses. The gardens were nicely laid out, if not imaginatively planned.
The scent of magnolia assailed her sensitive nostrils. A little away from the main building, the boundary wall seemed to give way, curving downwards. She walked towards the curve as though impelled, and found steps leading down into what seemed to be a sunken garden. The scent of the Magnolia grew stronger. Yes, she caught sight of a branch --- two branches actually, one bearing pinkish white flowers, and the other flaunting blooms of gold, both entwined into each other. The shrubs must be planted very close, she thought idly, breathing deep, her eyes closed.
“Looking for someone?”
The brusque voice, sounding almost in her ear, made her jump. Literally. She swung round sharply to face her interrogator, and was annoyed to find herself swaying on her feet. A hand reached out and gripped her soft upper arm.
Her sudden clumsy movement had made her drop her bag. As she tried to retrieve it, the press button that held the flap burst open, scattering some of her belongings on the ground. He immediately bent and picked them up, before she could . . . a compact, her wallet, her room-key which she had retained with her, a lipstick . . .
She shoved the stuff back into her bag, higgledy-piggledy, with a murmur of thanks. She secured her bag and looked up at him. He seemed decent enough, if a bit rough-hewn. Mid-fortyish, stocky, solidly built. Dark glittering eyes under beetling brows, a bushy black beard trying to subdue full, somewhat coarse lips. His voice was at variance with his appearance, thought Dipannita. More educated than he appeared to be.
“Sorry about all this,” she said awkwardly, startled into being on the defensive. “I am . . . I was . . . on my way to my hotel, when I came across this trail and . . . I wondered where it led . . .” she trailed off.
“Where are you staying?” he asked . “Which hotel?”
“Hotel Windcliffe .”
“That’s some distance from here. And quite isolated. Have you lost your way?” he seemed concerned.
“N.n.no …. No, but … am I trespassing?” she asked apologetically, wondering who the hell this chap was. He was definitely not one of the owners of this fairly grand-looking place. Clothes and appearance all wrong, she naively told herself. Even if he sounded educated. Was he the caretaker? He seemed a cut above the usual caretaker-type. Maybe an estate manager or steward or something, she thought doubtfully. She lived in a world where such things were not quite unheard of.
The man did not enlighten her. And something in his demeanour, in his gaze, precluded her from asking him the questions she was dying to. Like what was this place? A private residence? Rather a large, rambling place. It had an Atmosphere. Whom did it belong to? Were the owners around? Could she look around a bit?
“Would you like to look around a bit?”
“Yes, please, if I’m not trespassing?”
“You are not . . . not if I invite you.” Those words should have been accompanied by a smile. But weren’t. It struck her that he had perhaps forgotten how to smile.
“What’s down there?” she asked, pointing to the flight of steps.
“A holy place.” The word sounded strange on his lips.
“A garden?”
“Indeed! Watered by holy water straight from the Gaumukh. Come.”
She followed him, intrigued. Water from ‘Gaumukh’ in the Sahyadris?
The stone staircase was spiral, and the steps slippery with moss and lichen. He let her go first, and came close behind her, his arm once more grasping her bare upper arm. An involuntary thrill coursed through her. She stiffened. The fingers bit more deeply.
She went down gingerly. A light drizzle had started, bringing a slight nip into the atmosphere, redolent with the heady perfume of the magnolia and the jasmine. As they neared the bottom of the steps, the garden slowly came into view. Apart from the magnolia, and the jasmine and the jui, and several ferns and climbers, there were shrubs of night jasmine, which would flower only after sunset. Lilies and crocus sprung up at random in the tall grass.
Dipannita rounded the last bend, descended the last step, and caught sight of it --- the `water from Gaumukh’! And she laughed aloud. It was a spout in the shape of a cow’s head, probably connected to an underground spring, from which issued forth a stream of water. She ventured closer, and found the stream fell into a kind of a well. She leaned to look into the well. And she screamed.
*
At the precise moment that Dipannita caught sight of the boundary wall of her imagined castle in Maheshwar, an elderly man entered the Colaba Police Station, about 200 km. away, in the city of Bombay, to report a murder. A rather unusual murder. That of a beggar who seemed to be sort of stationed a short distance from the Taj Hotel. A mutilated creature. Armless. Right from the shoulder downwards. Both arms, Ramramram! A sorry looking specimen, the elderly gent told the Sr. Police Inspector, one wondered why anybody should bother to kill him, but killed he was, in cold blood, apparently. Stabbed! That too in broad daylight! What was the world coming to, for shame! Of course, these ruddy beggars were a nuisance and a pain, and should be got rid of, but not stabbed to death! What were the police doing nowadays, the elderly man muttered. Time was …
How did he notice? Well, on Tuesdays, he always gave alms to at least one beggar. Eased his conscience, somewhat. They were a nuisance, of course, whining and dirtying the roads and pawing decent people who themselves could barely make both ends meet in these hard days, but well, they too had to live, he supposed, and he wouldn’t miss a couple of rupees each week, would he?
Well, here was this poor chap, his head sagging on his chest. He thought he’d give him some money. It was when he bent to drop some coins into the tin can that hung on his chest, suspended by a tin wire round his neck, that he noticed the red stain. It took him just a moment to realize that the poor devil was dead. Of course, he knew better than to touch him. Blood and all. Of course he knew it’d be a police case! Why, he wouldn’t have touched the chap even if he hadn’t been so damned stinking filthy!
Yes yes, of course he would take the Inspector to the spot. He’d be late for his lunch, and his wife would be waiting for him, but well, duty called, didn’t it? He’d never been one to shirk his duty, No Sir! Hadn’t he come to inform the police? Going out of his way too, when all those younger men, good-for-nothing rascals, most of them, just stood round gawking and making lewd comments, no respect for death, not enough gumption to go to the Police . . .
By this time they had reached the dead body. Even the young rascals had disappeared. There were one or two curious lookers-on, and a young, well-dressed woman who was arguing with her male friend that something should surely be done, while the friend was trying to haul her away, assuring her it was no use getting mixed up in something like that, only a waste of time, and who knew what the cops would do, and who the hell was bothered, it was only some armless beggar anyway, who was probably better off dead. Why, he doubted if the poor devil could have risen up off the pavement without help. He wondered how he had managed to eat and drink and stay alive even that long!
At first sight he appeared to be dozing, his great shaggy head lolling on his chest. SI Pereira squatted by the dead man. Without touching him. He was stabbed all right. Not much external bleeding, just a slight red on the left side of his chest. Almost obscured by the tin can, but not quite. The murderer had known what he was about. The classic stab point was chosen. Probably a thin, very sharp blade.
“Was there any weapon lying around, Mr. Gupta?” Senior Inspector Geoffrey Pereira felt foolish even as he asked the question. He knew, of course, what the answer would be. But the question had to be asked.
No, he had seen no weapon, asserted Gupta. And of course, he had looked around for one, before going off to fetch the police. He had that much common sense, after all! Even if he hadn’t read so many detective novels, he’d have known enough, to look for the murder weapon.
Hiding a grin, Pereira reassured him, telling him he was an excellent witness --- just the kind of informant the Police prayed for. “And I only hope the pompous windbag doesn’t haunt the Station now,” he had muttered savagely to his Sub-Inspector later on.
*
It was the topic of discussion at Rashne’s party. Her article in ‘The Chronicle’.
“Absolutely thrilling, Sharmeen! Where did you get all those gory details?”
“ Too too gruesome, darling! Do such things really happen? I mean --- it’s worse than watching Ramsay brothers or whatever!”
“You mean you actually watch that tripe . . . ?”
“Hey Sharm, you’d better be careful, or you’ll have some of the Beggar Mafia gunning for your lovely neck. Better get some police protection. What say, Rashne? Where’s that cousin of yours?”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind police protection myself, if personally provided by Arshan.”
“What am I supposed to provide, and to whom?” The tall, lean man, who’d seemed to Sharmeen to be a bit out of place at the party came up, glass in one hand, and put his free arm round Rashne. So he was Rashne’s famous Police Commissioner cousin! Deputy Commissioner, she corrected herself mentally.
Rashne laughingly introduced them --- “Sharmeen Turel . . . Arshan Chinoy. Sharmeen is a free-lance journalist, Arsh. And her beat is crime … or should I say passion! She refuses to touch Society stuff. She’s after real dangerous stuff, like underworld dons and nasty slumlords, and her latest pet hate, the Beggar Mafia. Did you read her article in yesterday’s Chronicle?”
Deputy Commissioner Chinoy grinned sheepishly. “You know I don’t have time to read the papers, Rash! Nothing except the comics! Anyway, you’re bursting to tell me all about it.”
“Well, it’s pretty interesting, in a way. And I do think someone should investigate further. I mean the Police absolutely must do something about it!” Knowing his cousin of old, Arshan waited patiently . . .
Everybody knew, of course, that there was some kind of racket going on --- there were these Mafiosi, controlling beggars --- it was they who ran the racket, housing the beggars, placing them in strategic spots in the city, rotating them if thought fit, teaching them the tricks of the trade, making a fortune from money given to these wretched dregs of humanity as alms. That’s why quite a few people in Bombay stopped giving money to beggars. God knows who really benefitted!
Sharmeen’s story, however, had a different, quite horrifying angle, Rashne informed her cousin in thrilling tones. Sharmeen said people actually ran this as a sort of business, and `manufactured’ beggars --- by deliberately well, blinding people, or …or mutilating them. Could anybody be so depraved and cruel? Children kidnapped and `made suitable’ for begging! Sharmeen was sure there was some kind of base where these Beggar Mafia operated from. And that there was some head honcho who pulled the strings from behind the scenes. She felt if only the cops took some trouble, they would unearth these chaps and bust the racket. What did Arshan think? After all, he was the Deputy Commissioner, Crime Branch! Couldn’t he do something?
“Perhaps. But I’ll have to interrogate Ms. Turel, first.” The mocking eyes quizzed Sharmeen under raised brows.
“Oh, for God’s sake call her `Sharmeen’” Rashne said irritably.
She didn’t know quite how it came about, but Sharmeen found herself being dropped home by Arshan after the party. He too lived in Bandra, and she hadn’t taken her car. It was a hell of a hassle, getting parking space on Peddar Road in the evening.
After essaying `Commissioner Chinoy’ a couple of times and thinking she sounded silly, she switched to Arshan without his invitation. He was too savvy to let her know just how interested in her he was, in so brief a meeting. Actually, he knew quite a bit about Ms. Sharmeen Turel. He had read her article. Not only this recent one, but also most of the stuff she’d written. Had long admired the way she wrote. And what she wrote.
Her articles, especially her investigative pieces, had caused considerable comment in the top echelons of the Police. And now, in certain quarters, there was fear that she was attracting attention from dangerous quarters. Just recently they’d had a tip-off that some very undesirable types were keeping a close watch on Sharmeen Turel’s movements. Arshan had come to this blessed party only because Rashne had let drop that Sharmeen Turel would be there. He had wanted to meet her informally, socially, if possible.
He’d had no idea what she looked like. She did not permit her photograph to embellish her columns. She’d turned out to be a stunner. Not strictly beautiful, but an amazingly interesting face. He was in danger all right.
They talked mostly about her article. He admitted he had read it. He felt she had a point. But he also felt, quite seriously, that she was indeed courting danger. Especially after she revealed to him how often she had stood about in the streets at night, alone, around some beggar or the other, waiting for him to be approached by what she termed his (or her, of course), `minder’. Then she’d try and follow them if she could without doing it too obviously. He heard her out gravely. Then asked her if her efforts had met with any success.
“Have you really managed to follow these chaps? Discovered anything?” His voice was stern all of a sudden, the face grim, the brow furrowed.
“Silly little idiot,” he thought to himself. “She seems determined to rush in where any sane person would hesitate to tread. Does she not realize what they’d do to her if ever they got an inkling of what she was up to? And writing articles under her own name, on top of that. Damn fool woman,” he raged inwardly, even as he could not help admiring her guts. And her resourcefulness.
For Sharmeen was resourceful, all right. She had come pretty close to her objective. And she was determined, not to give up now. She knew the area where the hideout was, she was sure. A hillstation, not too far from Bombay, But she couldn‘t pinpoint the exact location, the actual spot.
“You’d better tell me what you’ve discovered,” he told her grimly, as she kept silent.
“Want me to do your job for you, Commissioner?” The delicious voice held more than a tinge of mockery.
Notorious for biting sarcasm himself, he was nonetheless in no mood to appreciate hers. His hands clenched on the steering wheel. He’d have shaken her hard had he not been driving, and never mind whether he had any right to do so or not. This girl was a calamity! To herself, above all.
Sharmeen grinned to herself in the darkness. She had some inkling of what her companion was feeling and thinking, and was glad. She knew she’d need police help to really succeed in what she hoped to do. Bust the Beggar Mafia.
She had reached a crucial point in this particular investigation, which was fast becoming an obsession with her. She was leaving for Maheshwar on Monday morning, the day after, (tomorrow, really! It was almost Sunday) to do a bit of a recce there. She had lost that van she’d been following, somewhere in the marketplace of that hill-station, when her own car had struck a puncture. She was pretty certain that that was where the Beggar Mafia had some kind of a hide-out --- somewhere in or around Maheshwar. Or even Patang, which was a sort of a satellite hill-station, famous for its boarding schools. If she did indeed find anything, she’d need back-up, and swift action. Also someone to SOS to, if she ran into any danger. She was bound to, she thought fatalistically. She’d often felt she herself was being followed or observed, even while she herself was doing the following or the observing. This was much too big to handle on her own. She’d need reinforcements. Meeting this chap at this juncture could well be a blessing. Why not exploit it? He was definitely intrigued, if not smitten. She knew the signs.
As he brought the car to a halt outside the building where she lived, she turned to him, placing a seemingly impulsive hand on his arm. “Will you help me, Arshan?” she asked.
“Get out,” was the cold, uncompromising response. “I’m seeing you to your flat,” he added in a tone that brooked no protest, parking the car and getting out himself.
*
In their opulent flat at Napean Sea Road, barely a 15-minute drive from Rashne’s place, the Chaudhary family was at dinner, en famille for once, at around the same time that Sharmeen’s article was being discussed at Rashne’s party. It was indeed a rare occasion when the Head of the family managed to get home in time for Dinner. The bahu, Sudha, had long since given up trying to assemble the family together at meal times. Caught between her mother-in-law’s interfering dominance and her husband’s general indifference to matters domestic, she took the line of least resistance. Even her daughter, thoroughly spoilt by Bhavik, and alternately indulged and bullied by Maaji, was totally out of her control.
So Sudha had taken refuge in God. Her days were filled with prayer and devotion. She visited temples, held Poojas for every conceivable occasion, good or bad, gave alms to priests and the poor, and prostrated herself at the feet of every visiting Guru or Maharaj. For the Maharaj that ruled her own kitchen, however, she reserved a quite different form of devotion.
Even before the rice was brought to the table, the dinner was interrupted by the trilling of Bhavik’s mobile, which lay on the side of his thali. It was his ‘special’ mobile, reserved for very special people and very urgent messages. Which he carried even to the loo. Since he had not made love to his own wife in the last five years, Sudha had no idea if he kept it on in bed, permitting its ubiquitous intrusion even into that most private of intimacies.
Maaji clucked and Dipannita sighed, as Bhavik rose and walked out of the room, the mobile glued to his ear. He was back in a couple of minutes, frowning heavily.
“What’s happened, beta? Any bad news?”
“Just a bit of nuisance,” he answered his mother.
“What nuisance,” she would not be put off so easily.
“One of our trucks, carrying rather valuable cargo, has been overturned on the ghats. They wanted to know what to do.” He looked at his wife. “I’ll have to leave, in an hour or so. See to my packing, will you? Enough clothes and stuff for a couple of days.”
“But Papa, you’re going to the Middle-East, shortly,” protested Dipannita.
“Yes, gudiya, but that’s next week. I’ll be back before then.”
“Well, if you don’t come back by Wednesday, I’ll have left myself.”
“Yes, you’re off with your college friends, aren’t you? To that hill-station?”
“Patang.”
“Oh! Yes of course. You’re going to Patang. Will you be staying there only, or are you moving around?”
“Oh no, we’ll be in Patang only. Rashida’s younger brother is in school there, and they’ll have half-term while we’re there. So we’ll be visiting the school, and maybe taking walks, and generally chilling out.”
“Let’s see, it’s Saturday today. Oh, of course I’ll be back by Wednesday. I’ll make sure I am,” he assured her.
“You’d better be,” she waved her fork at him mock-threateningly. He ruffled her hair caressingly and rose from the table, his mind already on this latest mishap and how to overcome it. It was worrisome. Hmmn … it was definitely worrisome!
Maaji clucked again. Bhavik was really spoiling the child. Had she dared to do that to her father, she’d have had her knuckles well rapped. But Bhavik would not let anyone so much as touch that girl in anger. The only time she, Maaji, had tried to physically chastise Dipannita for her own good, Bhavik, on hearing of it from his daughter, had flown into a rage with his mother, warning her never again to dare raise her hand or take a cane to Dipannita. Sudha herself had never dared, knowing her husband’s almost violently obsessive love for their only child.
Behind her light-hearted badinage, Dipannita’s mind was churning with speculation. Her father ran a recruiting business. Recruiting unskilled labour from UP and Bihar, and other such places and got them jobs in the Middle East.
“That’s the business to be in ---labour! No dearth of raw material for that, in this country. Too much population, mostly ignorant and illiterate, easy to handle and manage,” she’d heard him once expound to a group of friends, who’d come over for drinks and cards.
What did a truck in the ghats have to do with recruiting business? wondered Dipannita. Most of the labourers came by train, from Bihar or UP. She knew, her father did organize transport and stuff for his recruits. Maybe he was getting people from other places, now. She had heard rumours that times were bad, and that Gulf jobs were getting scarcer, the Middle-Eastern governments getting stricter. Maybe even labour was hard to get. Luckily, her father’s agency or whatever seemed to be thriving. There was no shortage of money in the Chaudhary household. She herself had only to express a desire to have it instantly gratified by her adoring Dad. Oh well, maybe he had some other business she knew nothing about, she shrugged. Not that she knew much about his businesses, anyway.
She forgot all about the truck on the ghats, and thought pleasurably about her own projected trip.
* * *
Sharmeen returned to the Hotel Windcliffe late evening, dead tired. It was the same day that Dipannita had discovered `Gaumukh’ in Maheshwar.
Sharmeen had registered as Avan Fraser. Arshan had insisted on that. As he’d insisted on her carrying the mobile he gave her, with a special roaming facility.
“You take this, keep it with you always, and keep it on”, he’d ordered. Noticing the spark of mutiny in her fine dark eyes he’d added grimly, “You either promise you’ll do as you’re told and take proper precautions, or I’ll take you into protective custody. And enjoy doing it,” he assured her. They’d met at her flat again on Sunday, to work out all the details of her trip to Maheshwar.
Sharmeen returned to the hotel to find cops swarming round the place, and the hotel manager in a state of near apoplexy. And, amazingly, astoundingly, to find Arshan Chinoy there. He seemed to be the cause of the manager’s apoplexy!
He noticed her as soon as she walked into the reception area. But he made no move towards her. He was looking grim as hell. She wondered what was up. About to go up to him, she noticed, on the sofa, the body covered in white sheet up to the face. As though impelled, she walked up to it. It was a young face. Once a pretty face. Now grotesque. Seemed to have been strangled.
Despite herself, she swayed. And found her arm caught in a hard grip which was oddly reassuring. It managed to convey strength and anger and reassurance and comfort, all at once. She leaned her head against his shoulder. “What’s happened? Who . . . who is she?”
“Sharmeen Turel.” The mockery in his voice was bitter.
Tears suddenly sprang into her eyes as she turned to look up at him, horror mingling with hurt reproach. In that moment he realized how vulnerable she could be. He was ashamed of his bitter tongue. He put his arm around her and hugged her slightly. “That was the name she’s registered under. Lord knows why. Her real name is Dipannita Chaudhary. At least that’s what all credit cards in her wallet indicate!”
She was stunned. “But . . . why did she . . . how . . . I suppose she’d read it in some paper?” He nodded. A killing thought struck her. She clutched the hand resting on her shoulder. “Arshan . . . this means . . .”
“. . . Someone wanted to kill you, but killed her instead, thinking she was you,” he completed for her. “That’s why I came racing down. Made it in three hours, from Bombay. The news received there was that `Sharmeen Turel’ had been found, murdered. By the time I reached here, Inspector Mahadik here had searched her room and discovered her real identity.”
His tone told her what his words did not. Part of his anger had been due to anxiety. But oh God, what a mess. And this girl, this poor, poor girl!
“Come,” said Arshan, clasping her hand. “I’ll take you to your room. Pack up. I’m taking you back to Bombay. We’ve made arrangements for the body to be taken to Bombay. I’ll depute some chaps to go to her folks once we find out where she lives. I’m sure the address given here is bogus, but she seems to be from Bombay, all right."
“If she’s been killed instead of me,” Sharmeen said huskily, looking straight into Arshan’s eyes, “there could only be one reason . . . that I’m right, and that hide-out is somewhere here.”
“Yes, I’d gathered that,” he said dryly. “Instructions have been given --- for a discreet but thorough search of every likely place in Maheshwar. If need be, even the unlikely ones --- then they’ll move to Patang. I’m taking no chances, now. This gang just has to be busted, and the ringleader caught. We’ll have a detailed talk later, in Bombay.”
She knew what that meant, of course. She was now in greater danger than ever. He’d probably insist on police protection for her. Oh well, she’d think about it later. Right now, she could not rid her mind of the thought that another young girl, a much younger girl, had been killed for her sake --- instead of her! It was bitter gall to swallow, for someone so sensitive as Sharmeen.
* * *
The Constable on duty brought Bhavik a cup of tea. He choked on the very first sip. He tried to compose himself. He could see they were waiting to ask him some questions. He must help them. Help them catch this bastard, who’d done this to his daughter.
He’d been told that she was found, strangled, in the gardens of some hotel in Maheshwar. So she’d lied about going to Patang. Not that it mattered now. Nothing mattered. Except to avenge her murder.
“I don’t understand . . . my daughter . . . why should anyone . . . was there any . . . was there . . . ?”
“Yes, Mr. Chaudhary, we are afraid so,” Inspector Menon cut in swiftly. Of course, we yet have to do the PM, but preliminary examination by the Medical Officer does show evidence of rape. Probably shortly before she was killed.”
“There’s perhaps one thing you could help us with, sir,” continued the Inspector. “Something that’s been bothering us a great deal.”
Bhavik looked at him in dumb inquiry.
“Did your daughter know a lady called Sharmeen Turel?”
Bhavik’s face had turned even more ashen. “W..why do you ask that, Inspector?” He asked, a tremor in his voice.
“Because for some reason, your daughter had assumed that name, when she registered herself at Hotel Windcliffe, in Maheshwar. She told the hotel clerk her name was Sharmeen Turel. And that was the name she was known by, at that hotel. . . . Mr. Chaudhary? Mr. Chaudhary? Are you all right, Mr. Chaudhary? Get a glass of water, quickly,” the Inspector ordered the Constable on duty, as Chaudhary seemed to visibly shrink, guttural, keening sounds emitting from his lips.
That conversation . . . that fatal telephone conversation, just a day before he was to leave for the Gulf . . . after Dipannita had left . . .
“Bahadur speaking Boss, from Gaumukh. We’ve found out who’s been snitching on us, Boss. It’s that haramkhor Malloo, whose arms we took off last month. Necessary steps will be taken, Boss. We’ll make an example of him.”
“Good,” he’d said. Well, he couldn’t have people snitching, in his business, could he? They’d have to set an example!
“More good news, Boss, we’ve also located that dame . . . that Sharmeen Turel, who’s been troubling us. She’s here right now, at Maheshwar, in Hotel Windcliffe. Go ahead, Boss?”
“Yes, dammit,” he’d snapped into the phone. “Finish her off. Khatam kar dalo, saali ko. But listen, her body must be found. If she disappears, there’ll be a search. We don’t want that. But finish her off as soon as possible.”
“Will do, Boss! She’s some babe, though! You’d have enjoyed her, Boss. Er, mind if . . .”
“Do what you like with her, the bitch,” he’d laughed crudely. “Have your fun, but finish her off. I’m off to Muscat, tomorrow. I want a full report when I return.”
The full report. He’d got it all right.
He stood frozen, gazing blankly at the sympathetic Inspector, as flames flickered all around him, leaping higher and higher, engulfing him till he was burning in Hell.
XXXX____________________XXXX
Of crimes Crimes CRIMES
Of crimes and Crimes and CRIMES …These are tough times for a writer of crime fiction --- true-life threateningly impinges on the fictional, and imagination reels under the onslaught of newspaper reports. It would appear we are surrounded by crime --- and crime graded on scales of Czerniesque variations --- crimes of social nuisance and traffic offences to Crimes of kidnap and theft and murder to CRIMES, the organized crimes of terror and mayhem, crimes against the State, crimes planned and directed by the nether-world. The boundaries in between are getting increasingly blurred. There’s an upward mobility from crime to Crime to CRIME! The Police by and large remain the Police --- only sometimes, the Politicians take over. But that’s not upward mobility, that could be an overlap of jurisdiction, leading sometimes to ultimate usurpation. Can we then, any longer, afford the apathy of the uninvolved? Can any of us survive in an Ivory Tower of Olympian uninvolvement, without being ultimately engulfed? Not only do we suffer regular assault on our senses and sensibilities, but we perforce have to walk the tightrope between different kinds of Terrorism unleashed by divergent entities. To counter the terrorism of the underworld, the State unleashes Terrorism of its own, almost welcomed by the average citizen suffering a surfeit of crimes of all descriptions, till one gets caught in the pincer movement. Draconian laws enacted to contain one evil can become instruments of coercion in unscrupulous hands. To the general unease of a populace rendered vulnerable there’s the added danger of unrest deliberately created by the agents provocateur, trained, infiltrated and controlled by that nebulous but pervasive Foreign Hand. This infiltration is perhaps more invasive than we are wont to credit. Identity of skin-colour, physical characteristics, language, culture, food habits, etc., between these hostile agents and the general populace make detection virtually impossible, and the spread of inflammatory propaganda and incendiary action through innocent but gullible tools so much easier! A whisper becomes a rumour resulting in rowdiness culminating in riots.So stretched are the limits of credulity that nothing appears incredulous any more. And therein lies the danger that the Innocent may pay for Crimes or CRIMES they have not committed, that the victims may be portrayed as the perpetrators, the unwary associates as the active accomplices. Courts take too long, cases drag on for years, so whatever is fed to and by a multi-pronged media assumes the veneer of authenticity, even for the discerning viewer. The role of the information-givers gets confused with the role of the investigators. A query becomes a fact, a thought becomes a quote. By the time one’s Innocence is proclaimed, after prolonged proceedings, public imagination is seized with other sensations of that moment; what price, then, the liberty and reputation of the Innocent? Does that really matter, unless it happens to Us? That it can, does not occur to us until it does!Just as the commission of crime tends to have a spiralling effect, so could containment of crime have a diminishing effect. We have today a scenario where nearly every Citizen indulges in some crime or the other --- be it traffic offenses, municipal offenses, social crimes --- and then resorts to corrupting officials to overlook that offense; leading from corruption to Corruption to CORRUPTION! If crime and corruption could be contained by Citizens themselves, there would be that much less burden on our overburdened Police and Courts. Let us not think that if we can `get away’ with it, we should! In the long run, we all suffer the consequences of what some of us may have contributed to.Bombay has always preened itself on being the Melting Pot --- of diverse people, cultures, talents . . . the melting pot has unfortunately become a simmering cauldron, with faggots of fire being continually thrown from all directions. It’s time to bank down those fires before they conflagrate. For this, the People need to pull together as much as the Police and the Politicians and refrain from committing or tolerating crimes, as much as Crimes or CRIMES. Sigh! I know! We’ve all said it, ad infinitum. Now how about really, truly, getting down to it? We all CAN, you know!
Khatling Glacier Trek
ALMOST UP TO HEAVEN . . .ALONG A GLORIOUS TRAIL. Ice-crusted peaks soaring heavenward, cleaving the azure expanse overhead . . . steep, craggy slopes dense with oak, deodar, birch and pine . . . lush meadows randomly dotted with a myriad species of exquisite streams gushing forth from glaciers, cutting deep gorges through stratified rock and icy moraines along their tempestuous course . . . words can convey just so much, give but the merest inkling of the aloof grandeur, the awesome beauty of that northern stretch of India : the Garhwal Himalayas. It is a region of remote, uncompromising beauty --- and yet accessible to those game enough to take up the challenge. To trek in the Himalayas, you merely need to be stout of heart and will --- not necessarily particularly strong of limb. I’m not ! And yet, with three of my friends, (all of us city slickers), we made it almost up to Heaven, along a gloriously dicey path --- with a few heart-stopping moments but without any mishap --- to Khatling Glacier . . . The name itself sounds somewhat intiimidating : like the rattling of a sabre . . . K H A T L I N G ! A pristine lateral glacier in the midst of dense forests, at a height of around 12,200 feet in the Garhwal Himalayas, slightly West of Gaumukh (considered to be the source of the holy River Ganga). It was rather early in the season when we decided to do the trek (generally not too difficult for regular high altitude trekkers) --- just the beginning of May . We knew we would face heavy snow in the higher reaches, and rains and hail along the way. What we did not know was, that last August there had been some glacier bursts in that region, resulting in heavy floods and major landslides; the path was all but washed away, rendering the mountainside treacherous. Blithely unaware of what was in store for us, we rushed in where Angels may perhaps have feared to tread . . . but we did return, limbs intact ! Khatling Glacier is the source of the Bhilangana River, which empties into the holy Bhagirathi. Bhagirathi confluences with the vivacious Alaknanda at Deoprayag, to form the legendary Ganga. Yes, the Indian Rivers have very definite adjectives applicable to them ! Eternal Eves, they have their consorts, the mountains, well and truly in their coils --- literally and figuratively ! Legend has it the Bhilangana is the transmigrated soul of a heavenly nymph, who tried to seduce the austere Lord Shiva, and failed. Unable to bear the humiliation of being spurned, she transformed herself into the River ! In the Garhwals, every River is a Goddess, and a God sits atop every snow-clad peak. You do not need to suspend disbelief to believe this, if you’re actually there. The very air exudes divine wonderment . . . and gets into the skin of even a cynical agnostic. Legend and myth are woven into the very fibre of Uttarakhand where untamed, untamable Nature holds Man in thrall and rational doubt gives way to fatalistic belief in the incredible, almost as a matter of course. Despite the dangers we faced, this was one trek I would not have liked to have missed. The Himalayas do that to you : hardships get trivialized beneath notice when you experience first-hand the breathtaking grandeur of the snow-dappled mountains, the fragrant aroma of the forests, the invigorating sight of Rhododendrons in full bloom and the soothing caress of wet leaves and trailing moss as you inch your way under the dense canopy of oak and deodar and pine. Somehow, from somewhere, you get the strength. Even if you collapse on reaching civilization ! We met at New Delhi. Rajan, Shishir and Kunal landed up at the New Delhi Railway Station to meet me at the platform. There was no bus to Rishikesh for at least another hour; we decided to take a taxi. From Bombay to Rishikesh is quite a leap --- in space, time, and ambience. The town resounds with spirituality : an agnostic could not escape the vibrations if he tried ! The River Ganga is the mainstay of the residents, and the focal point of attraction for the transient tourists and pilgrims. The Ganga is indeed the life-blood of Rishikesh. It is Rishikesh ! We stayed a day in Rishikesh, mainly to hire tents and equipment from the Garhwal Mangal Vikas Nigam (GMVN). We had hoped to get in a day’s river-rafting, but it was the tail-end of the season and instructors were not available. The GMVN does not permit rafting after May 1st. From Rishikesh, we took a cab to Ghuttu. Ghuttu is the last motor-head, before we start trekking. I fell ill at Rishikesh itself, and was trudging along with fever, a throat worse than sandpaper, and six antibiotics a day. (I normally never touch the stuff!) Not the ideal conditions for a trek, even to heavenly destination. But I still wouldn’t have liked to miss this one. Ghuttu, a delightful town on the banks of the Bhilangana River, was the last halt where we could get anything we needed for the trek ahead : food, medicines, provisions, etc. Normally, of course, everything likely to be needed during a trek is packed from home itself, before you take off. But one tends to forget, or run out of things. As one goes ahead, on the way to Khatling, there is nothing but wilderness . . . and breathtaking scenery. Food enough for the soul, no doubt --- but you do need to stock up food for the body, especially when you’re trekking 20-30 km. in about half a day, at altitudes above 10,000 feet. (In the mountains, it’s by and large advisable to reach your next camping spot by the afternoon). At Ghuttu, Reeh and Gangi, you can stay in the guest-houses run by the GMVN, as we did. The guest house at Ghuttu is well equipped, the canteen is rather good, and the view superb! (Most of the guest-houses of the GMVN are ideally located.) All the guest houses have an impressive number of tube-lights, bulbs, switches, etc. The only problem is the actual electricity, which is as unreliable as the weather in the hills! Most of the time, we had to make do with a hurricane lamp and our torches. Make sure you carry at least two powerful torches per person, and plenty of extra cells. In the Himalayas, the darkness envelopes you like an all-pervading blanket in which torch-beams get reduced to pathetic flickers. At Ghuttu, we hired four porters-cum-guides for the trek. We were carrying, apart from our personal baggage, tents, carry-mats, sleeping bags, a small stove, pressure cooker, a couple of vessels to cook in, food, provisions, medicines, kerosene, the works. And of course, provisions for the porters, including rice, daal, masala, etc. From Ghuttu to Reeh, (around 10-11 km.), the trek is along a fairly easy path, with few ups and downs. This trail too was washed away by the floods last August, but mercifully was rebuilt by the forest department and the villagers. The Reeh-Gangi stretch, also 10 km., is rather steep. Along the trails from Ghuttu to Gangi we met quite a few local inhabitants: rosy-cheeked children came running to us, with a cheerful Namaste, and the inevitable request for `mithai : sweets! The elderly stopped us with demands for medicines --- `goli, as they put it, for fever, headaches, and sore-throats : the usual ailments plaguing the mountain-dwellers. The women (almost all wearing the most elaborate and gorgeous gold nose-rings I had ever seen), eyed me curiously, asking the most personal questions without inhibition --- was I married, why wasn’t my husband with me, how many children did I have ? etc. etc. etc. . . Upto Gangi, there was a definite path, and though the trek was rather steep and tiring in parts, it was not life-threatening. The local inhabitants had terraced considerable chunks of the mountainside for cultivation, and golden patches of wheat swaying in the nascent sunshine were a common sight, before they fell prey to the cutting edge of the scythe. From time to time we would come across mounts of freshly-dug earth --- those turned out to be potato farms. Potato is the one vegetable freely available in those regions, apart from lingdi, which the locals call `99’, because the veggie is shaped like a `9’! The locals busy themselves with cultivation, and grazing herds of goats, sheep, cows and buffaloes on the gentler slopes. During the trekking season, some make money acting as porters and guides. Having shaken off the heat and dust of the plains, we revelled in temperatures ranging from 5 degrees Celsius to 15 degrees. We crossed numerous small streams along the way, some having rickety bridges, some having no bridges, merely stones and boulders over which we hopped across. It rained heavily every afternoon till the night, and at Gangi it actually hailed quite heavily. The evening we reached Gangi, the weather became so bad that we had grave apprehensions, whether or not we’d be able to go ahead. Because beyond Gangi all was wilderness --- we were warned by the porters and guides that they themselves were not too sure of the way. Ours was virtually the first team, that season, to proceed towards Khatling. It was rather early in the year, and the path had all but disappeared. Traversing the mountains had now indeed become a Himalayan task (pun intended)! The horsemen had to abandon their horses and carry all luggage on their backs. From now on, there were no guest-houses, no cultivated patches, no villages, no herds of goats, cows or buffaloes. Just the forested mountains, the river and streams. And us. We reduced our luggage almost by half, leaving behind the rest of the stuff in the guest-house at Gangi. Fortunately, the day we left Gangi was quite sunny and bright. We started off at a brisk pace, determined to brave the way ahead . . . . . . What lay ahead was a squelchy mass of treacherous, pathless mountainside! Large chunks of mountains had been washed away by the landslides and glacier bursts. In parts, entire mountains had been cloven almost into half, completely stripped of all vegetation from the peak to the foot. Huge trees lay uprooted and we had to clamber ahead over the felled trunks of the once majestic oaks and gracious deodars which now lay dying, supporting colonies of mushrooms and a profusion of ferns. The mountainside had become dangerous, in parts almost life-threatening. It became difficult to get any safe foot-hold. The earth was wet and lumpy, causing our feet to slip; there were loose boulders and rocks all round, giving way at the slightest touch, likely to go hurtling down if we stepped on them; we could not hold on to the trees for support as their roots had been weakened by the landslide --- they were likely to come off in our hands, as we teetered at the edge of a praecipice above a 1000-foot fall into the Bhilangana ! At times, we found it easier to sit and slither across, or roll across, almost lying on the ground. The porters were tremendous help on such stretches. One of them had attached himself quite firmly to me and would not let me out of his sight. From time to time he would murmur encouragingly : “Don’t worry Didi, I won’t let you fall. I’ll take you on my shoulders, if need be!” I did not have the heart to tell him I’d be even more terrified of being carried on his shoulder, in those stretches! At that altitude, it is necessary to stay close to the ground, to ensure gravitational balance. However, the guide’s helping hand was tremendously reassuring. But what really saved us was the humble forest bamboo! Bamboo has roots that go deep into the earth and the shoots are extremely flexible, yet strong. (The green ones that is; the dry ones would snap.) Whenever we saw a clump of bamboos, we would sigh with relief, “Jaan bach gayee!” Clinging on to the bamboo for dear life, the porters and the four of us made it across from Gangi to Kharsoli. Nonetheless, the trek was extremely rewarding and the sights, sounds and smells that assaulted our senses will stay encapsulated in our memories for a long time to come. The views were stupendous : looming all around were the snow-clad peaks glittering in the sun; the Khatling itself, a huge expanse of virgin ice, glowing with a cold fire, as alluring as any Lorelei, beckoning us farther; the forest, daily laundered, exuding a heady aroma a perfumer may well covet; the canopy of trees soothing the eye and invigorating the spirit; the frothy Bhilangana bubbling away alongside, feeding numerous small streams and waterfalls which added enchantment to the trek . . . and all along the trail bloomed the spectacularly gorgeous Rhododendron. Blooming on shrubs that grow higher than eye level, the Rhododendron provided for us a phatasmagoria of colours: deep reds, scrumptuous pinks, tender mauves, pristine whites --- heavy, dew-drenched blooms balanced delicately on slender stems swaying gently in the breeze. The oak and birch and deodar hosted huge quantities of moss and epiphytic ferns that tickled our faces as we walked underneath. Occasionally we would come across a patch of the graceful silver birch --- the bhojpatra, whose bark can be peeled into strips, which the Ancients used to write text on, and store grain in. And the birds . . . the birds! Tits, Himalayan wood pigeons, bee-eaters, Himalayan magpies, Himalayan Eagles and numerous other species were seen and heard all along the trail, the birdsong now a glorious symphony, then a muted harmony, yet again a sharp counterpoint. Near Kalyani, on the way to Kharsoli, Rajan’s attention was attracted by a rock which seemed to move ! A strange, brown-coloured rock. Under our astonished gaze, the rock metamorphosed into a huge grizzly bear; it ambled around for a while, then caught hold of a tree trunk in the distance. We waited, breath bated, to see if it would climb the tree, when the porters started a ruckus, and the grizzly fled. We also sighted some foxes, a lone mongoose, and lots of langurs. Fortunately, all from a comfortable distance. Kharsoli, around 16 km. ahead of Gangi, is a good tenting spot to pitch camp. From a distance, the ground seemed level, and running water, the pre-requisite of any camping site, was available close by. Closer inspection, however, revealed that the ground was covered with stinging nettles and was not really that level. But there was no help for it ! We had to pitch tents there. The guys gallantly tried to choose the best site for my two-man tent, where I would stay alone, being the lone lady in the group. Even the `best’ site had a good-ish slope and every night I would find myself and the sleeping bag sliding down, down, down, and almost out of the tent ! The days we spent at Kharsoli and its environs were bliss indeed, despite the hassles . . . rising every morning to a spectacular view of the Khatling: the expanse of ice was at its most pristine white, powdered daily by fresh snow-fall. Glaciers have a crystalline quality that render them dazzling to the eye, especially in the nascent sunshine of early morn. The Khatling seemed a large drop of opal suspended in the distance, refracting the light into a myriad delicate hues. There was no other habitation around, and we were alone among the elements. The stars at night seemed a benediction and the bird-song at dawn, an enchanting call to rise ! From Kharsoli we trekked ahead farther. Crossing a couple of ice-fields, we made it up to Belbhagi, around 14 km. from the Khatling. We could not go beyond Belbhagi, as indeed we had been warned. There was heavy snow ahead, and the weather was worsening. We ultimately broke camp and returned to Ghuttu, perforce in half the time. The day we reached Ghuttu, the heavens opened up in a deluge. We had made it back just in time . . . after reaching almost up to Heaven . . . with a tantalizing bit of the way left for some other time . . . when the Rhododendron would bloom again.! and the Khatling not rattle quite so much.* * * *FACTSHEET The best season for trekking in the Garhwals, generally, is from end-May till end-September. From Ghuttu one can also go up to Panwali Kantha, (instead of to Khatling Glacier), and then onward to Kedarnath; another scenic route is from Reeh to Sahastratal. If one does not wish to walk too much, one can just go up to Gangi --- or can even stay put at Ghuttu, which is a charming Himalayan town, on the banks of the Bhilangana river. This area, unlike the Yatra line, is not crowded at all. The GMVN rest houses are clean, comfortable, have attached bathrooms, and very reasonable rates, from Rs.60/- per day to Rs. 200 per day, double occupancy ! The rest houses provide food. Tents, etc. can be hired from Rishikesh, or even Ghuttu. Guides and porters may be engaged from Ghuttu. The rates of the porters vary from around Rs.150/- to 200/- per day, plus food and tent accommodation. Tent hire-charges are quite reasonable, but you have to put in a refundable deposit of around Rs.2000/- per tent. From Ghuttu to Rishikesh there is a daily bus service, leaving at 7 am. There is a later bus, which terminates at Tehri. It is not easy to get taxis at Ghuttu, unless one is booked in advance, from Rishikesh or Tehri.
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