CHAPTER FOURTEEN
At the Shahane residence, the table was being laid for dinner. Everyone except Nivedita was in the dining room. The Khannas condoled with Prakash, looking embarrassed. Kuntabai asked Vinod to go and fetch Nivedita from her room. "And don't you listen to any excuses Beta," called the old lady after him, as he rose to go. "You make sure she comes to the dining table."
To everybody's surprise, Nivedita came without demur. Apart from her red, swollen eyes, she seemed quite normal. She even offered a feeble 'hello' to her father.
Well into his second roti, Arun Khanna judged it seemly to ask Prakash, "Have the police found out anything?"
"Nothing much really, except that she was poisoned," answered Prakash dully, adding that the poison used was an unusual one. "Some form of benzene, or so the doctors believe."
"And how was she given the poison?" persisted Arun, again.
"The Doctors aren't sure about that. "
"Poor lady," said Vinod. "Just after her birthday, too!"
"Yes," sighed Prakash heavily. "And there's another funny thing. The bottle of perfume I gave her as a birthday present seems to be missing from her dressing table."
"What do you mean Papa? 'Missing'?" That was Nivedita, showing curiosity about Dina's murder for the first time.
"Just that, darling," answered her father. "It's not there on her dressing table any more. I can't imagine where it has disappeared. Unless Dina herself broke it, and got the glass cleared up."
"Have you informed the police about it?" asked Vinod casually.
Prakash frowned. "I don't think it concerns them in any way. They have to investigate what they think is a murder, not bother about missing perfume bottles," he said rather disagreeably.
Kuntabai broke into the conversation. "Now that's quite enough talk about deaths and murders," she said decisively, her eyes covertly watching her son's gray, drawn face. They softened. "Beta," she said in a tone she had not used to him for over ten years, "you had better sleep here tonight, instead of staying alone in that place. Better still, stay here for a few days. The change will do you good."
Prakash smiled, his face brightening at her tone. "I don't know about a 'few days' maa," he said, "but I think I will stay over, tonight. I'll ring up Fatima and tell her I'm not coming home."
"That's a good idea," said Vinod. "I think Arun Maama's night clothes should do for you," anticipating an offer to that effect from the rather reluctant Arun.
After dinner, while the family had gathered together in the living room, Nivedita once more pleaded a headache, and went off to her room.
It was not an excuse. She really had a splitting headache, and the dinner seemed to have made it worse. After tossing and turning in agony for some time, she went to her dressing table pulled open the overstuffed drawer, and fumbled for the strip of Crocin she kept there. The strip had no tablets in it. All of them had been squeezed out.
Damn! Then she remembered. Vinod always kept some, in his bathroom cabinet. She padded over to his room. It was empty. And in darkness. He must still be in the living room, she thought.
She went into the bathroom, switched on the lamp there and opened the cabinet. She had to stand slightly on tiptoe to do so. She fumbled for the strip, knocking down a bottle in the process. She righted it automatically, then left the room, clutching the strip of Crocin in her hand.
She passed Vinod and her father, both going into Vinod's room just as she was leaving it. She tried to catch Vinod's eye. He was staring at the strip of Crocin in her hand. She informed him that she had a headache and stalked off to her room.
Prakash hesitated at the door, then told Vinod that he'd be along in a few minutes. He had forgotten to telephone Fatima, and to get some night-clothes from Arun.
Vinod got a bottle of whisky and two glasses. The ice bucket was already placed in his room.
* * * *
Kuntabai's sleep was disturbed, a little past midnight. Her eyelids fluttered. Always a light sleeper, of late she seemed to have become positively insomniac.
She knit her brow in the darkness, puzzled. Was it her imagination, or was she really hearing sounds? Strange sounds. As though someone were enjoying a particularly strenuous coupling!
Rather incongruous in this household, surely! Or was it? she wondered, troubled. There! There was that distinct 'thump', again! Followed by a quickly smothered squeal. A vague uneasiness gripped her. Then she pulled herself together and shrugged herself mentally into a fitful sleep.
Just as Kuntabai had finally fallen asleep, Vinod stirred restlessly. A glance at his bedside clock showed 4 in the morning. He sat up in bed, and stretched his arms overhead. Then he frowned.
The bedroom door was ajar! And the bed next to him empty!
Wondering what had happened to Prakash, he got out of bed and made for the door - only to collide into Prakash, as he entered.
"Did I disturb you? I'm sorry," he said, with a slightly selfconscious laugh. "My bladder's getting weak! And I'm getting old," he mumbled, sitting down heavily on the bed. "Good night," he said to Vinod, who was still standing uncertainly by the door, and lay down, pulling the sheet over him.
*
Showing posts with label murder mystery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label murder mystery. Show all posts
Saturday, February 7, 2009
The Turning - Chapter Twelve
CHAPTER TWELVE
While Banoo Maa, Zerxes and Scherezade were dining in Banoo Maa's comfortable kitchen, at the Shahane household, the atmosphere was one of unease, of strain. Nobody had as yet felt like dinner, not even Kuntabai, who normally ate early. The Khannas had postponed their departure to Calcutta on hearing the news of Dina's death from Vinod. Then the 'death' turned out to be murder. . .
Vinod had been visited by the police, who had wanted to know how he had known where Sattar had been staying in Poona. It seems that that stuck-up brother of Dina's had informed the cops that he had been given information about Prakash's hotel in Poona by Vinod.
A pall of disquiet had descended upon the household. Nivedita's behaviour was growing stranger and stranger. Kuntabai could hardly contain her apprehension about her grand-daughter's state. It was she who had asked Arun and Suchitra to stay back for a few days more. They were both so normal and sensible; their presence was somehow reassuring.
Nothing and nobody could calm Nivedita any longer. Not even Vinod. His brand of therapy made her even more unpredictable and demanding. More neurotic than ever. He'd have to do something about her, thought Vinod to himself moodily. The silly bitch had actually started caressing him in public!
Once she had disconcerted everybody at the dining table by suddenly asking Vinod, "It's a good thing she's been killed, don't you think? Don't you? Don't you?"
At around 8.30 pm, Kuntabai took Vinod aside. "Beta, any further news?"
Vinod shook his head. "Nothing, except that it definitely was murder."
Kuntabai thought for a moment. "Call up your father, Vinod. Ask him to come here for dinner. It is time he came back to us." She seemed to take it for granted that he would be at home.
Prakash was at home and agreed to come over with surprising alacrity. He was quite fed up of being at home anyway, with Fatima mooning around, giving him baleful, accusing stares. Sonali was out of bounds now; temporarily at least, or so he had tried to convince himself. He had consciously decided to stay away from her until all this had blown over, and had told her so when he had last met her at her clinic. She had agreed with almost insulting readiness. He had tried to avoid reading the signs of the beginning of the end of yet another relationship.
The call from Vinod was a Godsend. And the summons sent by his mother, a pull back into the security of the womb. At least here was the promise of the beginning of a rapprochement, he told himself hopefully.
It was indeed a homecoming of sorts. Only Nivedita, on hearing of his arrival, chose to go to bed with a headache.
* * * *
After Prakash had left, Fatima had an early dinner and was preparing to go to bed herself, having been told by Prakash not to wait up for him. Just then, the doorbell rang.
She shuffled to the door. One of the two Police Inspectors who had visited earlier stood on the doorstep. It was SI Rodricks. She stood behind the half-opened door, peered suspiciously at him, and mumbled sullenly that Sahib was not at home.
Rodricks managed to slip in through the door and nimbly step inside past her, saying easily, almost conversationally, "I'm glad to know your Sahib isn't in. There are certain things I'd like to know from you. Things I'm sure only you can clarify."
Under Patil's instruction, he had learnt that adroit questioning, rather than force and intimidation, produced better results. Generally people liked to talk, Patil had often told him. And sooner or later they would let slip something, some tiny, vital clue, which would be instrumental in helping to unravel the skein of circumstances leading to the murder, and ultimately to the murderer himself. Or herself. He was quite liberated in his views of the so-called gentler sex even when it came to murder. Especially when it came to murder!
His tactics worked with the dour, dumpy, middle-aged maid. Her stance was less defensive as she stood looking at him, allowing a hint of inquiry to creep into her gaze.
Rodricks returned her gaze with an understanding, almost sympathetic look. "What is your name?" he asked her.
"Fatima."
"Fatima, you have served your mistress faithfully for many years," he remarked half interrogatively, uncannily striking the right chord.
There was naked grief in the round homely face, which crumpled into silent tears. "Oh yes, Sahib. The Bibiji, I be with her, many many years. She was good to me. She taught me to read and write English, a little." She sighed in remembrance. "Then, when her Baba Hanoz died, when she left her Khurshed Sahib, . . ."
"Khurshed Sahib?" cut in Rodricks. "Was he her first husband?"
"Yes," replied the maid, going on with her story. "When she left Khurshed Sahib, she did not take Fatima with her. She was not sure where she would go. I went to live with Banoo Memsahib. Then, when she marry this one, she became Mussalman, then she came and brought me here. I lived with her again. Helped my Bibiji." She was weeping in earnest now, sniffing into the voluminous folds of her black odhni, which she wore draped over her shapeless black kameez and loose salwar.
Rodricks made a few soothing noises. When the sobs subsided, he asked, adopting a casual, almost friendly tone, "Did your Bibiji and Prakash Sahib get along well?" Then, as she looked blank, he asked, "Were there any fights between Bibiji and the Sahib?"
"No, no fights," conceded the maid reluctantly, adding viciously, "But he have another woman, the Sahib. He cheat my Bibiji. My Bibiji was not happy, for many many years." Her resentment of Prakash Sattar was evident.
"How do you know he has another woman?" he asked.
A sly look came into the homely face, and the semi-literate voice took on almost a coy tone. "He talks to her on phone. I sometime pick up other phone, by mistake." She paused, looking at him as though daring him to make any comment and then added, almost conspiratorially, "He talks love-talk to her!"
"D0 you know who this woman is? Has she ever come here?" The maid shook her head at him, as though amazed at his naivete.
"Sahib not mad, to bring other woman here!"
"Did your Bibiji and Sahib go out together much, to parties and things like that?" The woman creased her brow in thought.
"No," she said at last. "But before Bibiji's birthday, they went to her sister's house. Had dinner there. I did not cook, that day."
"I see. And when was Bibiji's birthday?" The tears started afresh. "What to tell you, Sahib," she cried. "The Bibiji, she died one day after her birthday!" The sobs grew louder, and then ceased gradually. The other end of the odhni had fallen away from her shoulder, and she caught at it hurriedly, wrapping it around herself securely.
Rodricks murmured thoughtfully, his sharp memory at work, "And the Sahib had gone out of town just the evening before she died. So he went out of town on the day of your Bibiji's birthday?" he inquired, infusing just the right amount of incredulity in his tone.
"Yes." It was a flat, emphatic, vindictive affirmative. Then she added grudgingly, "But before he went, Bibiji's people came here for lunch. Banoo Mem, Fardun Sahib, Rashna Mem, Sherrie Baby, Zerxes Sahib, Shirin Mem, Jamshed Sahib, Tehmul Sahib," she ticked them off her fingers, adding, "They came after that girl went away." She looked at Rodricks, as though waiting for him to react.
He did not disappoint her. "Girl? What girl? Do you know who she was?"
The sly look was back. "She never been here before, but I think she be the Sahib's daughter."
"By his first wife?"
"Not by my Bibiji," was the scornful answer.
"How do you know it was the Sahib's daughter?"
"She call him 'Papa'."
"Hmmm . . . " Rodricks took a turn around the room. "So Sahib's daughter had come on the day of your Bibiji's birthday, and gone away before her other relatives arrived!"
The odhni-covered head nodded vigorously several times in confirmation.
Rodricks went on. "Think carefully, Fatima. Did the Sahib's daughter give any present to your Bibiji?"
"No, she had nothing in her hand, only her purse. Sahib gave Bibiji present. In the morning. And all others gave. Sherrie Baby, Fardun Sahib, all others."
"Do you know who gave what?"
"The Sahib, he gave scent. In silver paper. I saw new bottle, and silver paper in basket in Bibiji's room. She put on scent when I went to give her her saree after ironing. Then see, Banoo Memsahib gave her locket. She put it herself on Bibiji's neck. Her sister, Shirin Mem gave saree. She said that. Don't know what Fardun Sahib and 5herrie Baby gave."
"So the Sahib gave her scent." Not the least of Rodricks' strengths as an investigator was that he could adopt the idiom of the person he was questioning. Making his victim feel at home with him. He asked casually, "Do you know which scent? Can you show me the bottle?"
"No Sahib," Fatima shook her head, not without a certain satisfaction at the news she was about to impart. "That bottle is now not there!"
"Now not there? Was it broken or something?"
"No, no glass," she said decidedly. "Bottle not broken. Gone!"
"When did you first find out, that the bottle was missing?"
"I saw it was not there today, when I go to clean Bibiji's table."
"And the silver paper? Is it still there, in the basket?"
"Maybe," was the hesitant answer. "I have not cleaned Bibiji's room. Don't feel like it, " she said defiantly.
Rodricks was too canny to point out the contradiction of her earlier statement, that she had 'cleaned' the table. Obviously, curiosity had prevailed over any desire to clean up.
"Shall we go and see if it is there?" he suggested.
She silently led the way to Dina's bedroom. Rodricks followed. He was pretty certain there was no silver wrapping paper in the dust-bin.
He himself had given the room a thorough once-over, when the finger print chaps and the photographers had come over, for the routine sceneof-the-crime investigation. Not that there had been much sense to it! The corpse had gone, and everything nicely tidied up by the time the police really got on to the job, he thought to himself glumly. Very convenient indeed, for someone!
Then he remembered the crumpled saree which had also been taken for testing. It had been sprayed with the poisoned perfume all right! The poor woman had been perfumed to death! And the bottle of 'scent' had been given by the husband.
Well, he knew where that bottle had gone. But how many people had had access to it while Dina was alive? Apart from the husband himself? A whole lot, he thought to himself gloomily. And quite easily, apparently, if that sister of Dina's could have purloined the whole bottle itself, without being detected in the act!
Suddenly, something occurred to Rodricks. Something so obvious, that almost all of them had missed it! But he knew better than Patil the ways of these Parsees. No way would a Parsee dame be wearing a saree at home unless she was expecting guests. And Dina Sattar had died in a choli and petticoat after having discarded the saree sprayed with the poisoned perfume. So Dina Sattar had had a visitor or visitors on the morning of her death! She herself had definitely not gone out. The watchman had sworn to that.
Her husband had been away. All her relatives had visited her just a day earlier. Who had been her visitor? Or visitors? It had to be somebody she was expecting, as she had taken the trouble to dress up. And someone who had been allowed up by the watchman as a matter of course. Without meriting suspicion or inquiry. Somebody obviously well-dressed. Of the same social standing as Dina!
Rodricks put a casual question to the maid. A sly look entered the dull, suspicious eyes. "Maybe better if I do not say," she demurred, almost coyly. "Sahib will not like it, if he comes to know!"
Upon Rodricks sternly repeating the question, iniorming her that it would do her no good to keep things from the Police, she ultimately revealed that Dina's first husband Khurshed Sooneji had come to visit her.
"I see," Rodricks murmured to himself. "So husband No. 1 enters the case now! I wondered if he would!"
Almost immediately, however, he realized that the information was not really of much use. Dina must surely have sprayed on the perfume before Khurshed arrived. Diluted with perfume, nitrobenzene would take at least twenty-four hours to cause death! Or so the Docs said. Still, he would have to check him out. He couldn't take any chances. This poison wasn't'perfectly understood. It could probably cause different reactions in different people, depending on the individual metabolism. The Docs themselves weren't too sure!
"Did anybody else visit her on that day?" He asked the maid, who was now looking uncomfortable.
"One other man came. I have not seen him before. I heard Khurshed Sahib say it was his brother. Porus. Never seen him here before. He was very angry when he came," Fatima volunteered, once again warming to her story.
"Angry about what?" prompted Rodricks.
"That Khurshed Sahib still come to see Bibiji," was the surprisingly prompt reply, before Fatima thought it expedient to add a cautious "I think".
"Then what happened?"
"Then Khurshed Sahib leave very fast. After that man. Bibiji then go to her room and go to sleep."
The maid started sniffling again, adding mournfully, "Then, she die!"
*
While Banoo Maa, Zerxes and Scherezade were dining in Banoo Maa's comfortable kitchen, at the Shahane household, the atmosphere was one of unease, of strain. Nobody had as yet felt like dinner, not even Kuntabai, who normally ate early. The Khannas had postponed their departure to Calcutta on hearing the news of Dina's death from Vinod. Then the 'death' turned out to be murder. . .
Vinod had been visited by the police, who had wanted to know how he had known where Sattar had been staying in Poona. It seems that that stuck-up brother of Dina's had informed the cops that he had been given information about Prakash's hotel in Poona by Vinod.
A pall of disquiet had descended upon the household. Nivedita's behaviour was growing stranger and stranger. Kuntabai could hardly contain her apprehension about her grand-daughter's state. It was she who had asked Arun and Suchitra to stay back for a few days more. They were both so normal and sensible; their presence was somehow reassuring.
Nothing and nobody could calm Nivedita any longer. Not even Vinod. His brand of therapy made her even more unpredictable and demanding. More neurotic than ever. He'd have to do something about her, thought Vinod to himself moodily. The silly bitch had actually started caressing him in public!
Once she had disconcerted everybody at the dining table by suddenly asking Vinod, "It's a good thing she's been killed, don't you think? Don't you? Don't you?"
At around 8.30 pm, Kuntabai took Vinod aside. "Beta, any further news?"
Vinod shook his head. "Nothing, except that it definitely was murder."
Kuntabai thought for a moment. "Call up your father, Vinod. Ask him to come here for dinner. It is time he came back to us." She seemed to take it for granted that he would be at home.
Prakash was at home and agreed to come over with surprising alacrity. He was quite fed up of being at home anyway, with Fatima mooning around, giving him baleful, accusing stares. Sonali was out of bounds now; temporarily at least, or so he had tried to convince himself. He had consciously decided to stay away from her until all this had blown over, and had told her so when he had last met her at her clinic. She had agreed with almost insulting readiness. He had tried to avoid reading the signs of the beginning of the end of yet another relationship.
The call from Vinod was a Godsend. And the summons sent by his mother, a pull back into the security of the womb. At least here was the promise of the beginning of a rapprochement, he told himself hopefully.
It was indeed a homecoming of sorts. Only Nivedita, on hearing of his arrival, chose to go to bed with a headache.
* * * *
After Prakash had left, Fatima had an early dinner and was preparing to go to bed herself, having been told by Prakash not to wait up for him. Just then, the doorbell rang.
She shuffled to the door. One of the two Police Inspectors who had visited earlier stood on the doorstep. It was SI Rodricks. She stood behind the half-opened door, peered suspiciously at him, and mumbled sullenly that Sahib was not at home.
Rodricks managed to slip in through the door and nimbly step inside past her, saying easily, almost conversationally, "I'm glad to know your Sahib isn't in. There are certain things I'd like to know from you. Things I'm sure only you can clarify."
Under Patil's instruction, he had learnt that adroit questioning, rather than force and intimidation, produced better results. Generally people liked to talk, Patil had often told him. And sooner or later they would let slip something, some tiny, vital clue, which would be instrumental in helping to unravel the skein of circumstances leading to the murder, and ultimately to the murderer himself. Or herself. He was quite liberated in his views of the so-called gentler sex even when it came to murder. Especially when it came to murder!
His tactics worked with the dour, dumpy, middle-aged maid. Her stance was less defensive as she stood looking at him, allowing a hint of inquiry to creep into her gaze.
Rodricks returned her gaze with an understanding, almost sympathetic look. "What is your name?" he asked her.
"Fatima."
"Fatima, you have served your mistress faithfully for many years," he remarked half interrogatively, uncannily striking the right chord.
There was naked grief in the round homely face, which crumpled into silent tears. "Oh yes, Sahib. The Bibiji, I be with her, many many years. She was good to me. She taught me to read and write English, a little." She sighed in remembrance. "Then, when her Baba Hanoz died, when she left her Khurshed Sahib, . . ."
"Khurshed Sahib?" cut in Rodricks. "Was he her first husband?"
"Yes," replied the maid, going on with her story. "When she left Khurshed Sahib, she did not take Fatima with her. She was not sure where she would go. I went to live with Banoo Memsahib. Then, when she marry this one, she became Mussalman, then she came and brought me here. I lived with her again. Helped my Bibiji." She was weeping in earnest now, sniffing into the voluminous folds of her black odhni, which she wore draped over her shapeless black kameez and loose salwar.
Rodricks made a few soothing noises. When the sobs subsided, he asked, adopting a casual, almost friendly tone, "Did your Bibiji and Prakash Sahib get along well?" Then, as she looked blank, he asked, "Were there any fights between Bibiji and the Sahib?"
"No, no fights," conceded the maid reluctantly, adding viciously, "But he have another woman, the Sahib. He cheat my Bibiji. My Bibiji was not happy, for many many years." Her resentment of Prakash Sattar was evident.
"How do you know he has another woman?" he asked.
A sly look came into the homely face, and the semi-literate voice took on almost a coy tone. "He talks to her on phone. I sometime pick up other phone, by mistake." She paused, looking at him as though daring him to make any comment and then added, almost conspiratorially, "He talks love-talk to her!"
"D0 you know who this woman is? Has she ever come here?" The maid shook her head at him, as though amazed at his naivete.
"Sahib not mad, to bring other woman here!"
"Did your Bibiji and Sahib go out together much, to parties and things like that?" The woman creased her brow in thought.
"No," she said at last. "But before Bibiji's birthday, they went to her sister's house. Had dinner there. I did not cook, that day."
"I see. And when was Bibiji's birthday?" The tears started afresh. "What to tell you, Sahib," she cried. "The Bibiji, she died one day after her birthday!" The sobs grew louder, and then ceased gradually. The other end of the odhni had fallen away from her shoulder, and she caught at it hurriedly, wrapping it around herself securely.
Rodricks murmured thoughtfully, his sharp memory at work, "And the Sahib had gone out of town just the evening before she died. So he went out of town on the day of your Bibiji's birthday?" he inquired, infusing just the right amount of incredulity in his tone.
"Yes." It was a flat, emphatic, vindictive affirmative. Then she added grudgingly, "But before he went, Bibiji's people came here for lunch. Banoo Mem, Fardun Sahib, Rashna Mem, Sherrie Baby, Zerxes Sahib, Shirin Mem, Jamshed Sahib, Tehmul Sahib," she ticked them off her fingers, adding, "They came after that girl went away." She looked at Rodricks, as though waiting for him to react.
He did not disappoint her. "Girl? What girl? Do you know who she was?"
The sly look was back. "She never been here before, but I think she be the Sahib's daughter."
"By his first wife?"
"Not by my Bibiji," was the scornful answer.
"How do you know it was the Sahib's daughter?"
"She call him 'Papa'."
"Hmmm . . . " Rodricks took a turn around the room. "So Sahib's daughter had come on the day of your Bibiji's birthday, and gone away before her other relatives arrived!"
The odhni-covered head nodded vigorously several times in confirmation.
Rodricks went on. "Think carefully, Fatima. Did the Sahib's daughter give any present to your Bibiji?"
"No, she had nothing in her hand, only her purse. Sahib gave Bibiji present. In the morning. And all others gave. Sherrie Baby, Fardun Sahib, all others."
"Do you know who gave what?"
"The Sahib, he gave scent. In silver paper. I saw new bottle, and silver paper in basket in Bibiji's room. She put on scent when I went to give her her saree after ironing. Then see, Banoo Memsahib gave her locket. She put it herself on Bibiji's neck. Her sister, Shirin Mem gave saree. She said that. Don't know what Fardun Sahib and 5herrie Baby gave."
"So the Sahib gave her scent." Not the least of Rodricks' strengths as an investigator was that he could adopt the idiom of the person he was questioning. Making his victim feel at home with him. He asked casually, "Do you know which scent? Can you show me the bottle?"
"No Sahib," Fatima shook her head, not without a certain satisfaction at the news she was about to impart. "That bottle is now not there!"
"Now not there? Was it broken or something?"
"No, no glass," she said decidedly. "Bottle not broken. Gone!"
"When did you first find out, that the bottle was missing?"
"I saw it was not there today, when I go to clean Bibiji's table."
"And the silver paper? Is it still there, in the basket?"
"Maybe," was the hesitant answer. "I have not cleaned Bibiji's room. Don't feel like it, " she said defiantly.
Rodricks was too canny to point out the contradiction of her earlier statement, that she had 'cleaned' the table. Obviously, curiosity had prevailed over any desire to clean up.
"Shall we go and see if it is there?" he suggested.
She silently led the way to Dina's bedroom. Rodricks followed. He was pretty certain there was no silver wrapping paper in the dust-bin.
He himself had given the room a thorough once-over, when the finger print chaps and the photographers had come over, for the routine sceneof-the-crime investigation. Not that there had been much sense to it! The corpse had gone, and everything nicely tidied up by the time the police really got on to the job, he thought to himself glumly. Very convenient indeed, for someone!
Then he remembered the crumpled saree which had also been taken for testing. It had been sprayed with the poisoned perfume all right! The poor woman had been perfumed to death! And the bottle of 'scent' had been given by the husband.
Well, he knew where that bottle had gone. But how many people had had access to it while Dina was alive? Apart from the husband himself? A whole lot, he thought to himself gloomily. And quite easily, apparently, if that sister of Dina's could have purloined the whole bottle itself, without being detected in the act!
Suddenly, something occurred to Rodricks. Something so obvious, that almost all of them had missed it! But he knew better than Patil the ways of these Parsees. No way would a Parsee dame be wearing a saree at home unless she was expecting guests. And Dina Sattar had died in a choli and petticoat after having discarded the saree sprayed with the poisoned perfume. So Dina Sattar had had a visitor or visitors on the morning of her death! She herself had definitely not gone out. The watchman had sworn to that.
Her husband had been away. All her relatives had visited her just a day earlier. Who had been her visitor? Or visitors? It had to be somebody she was expecting, as she had taken the trouble to dress up. And someone who had been allowed up by the watchman as a matter of course. Without meriting suspicion or inquiry. Somebody obviously well-dressed. Of the same social standing as Dina!
Rodricks put a casual question to the maid. A sly look entered the dull, suspicious eyes. "Maybe better if I do not say," she demurred, almost coyly. "Sahib will not like it, if he comes to know!"
Upon Rodricks sternly repeating the question, iniorming her that it would do her no good to keep things from the Police, she ultimately revealed that Dina's first husband Khurshed Sooneji had come to visit her.
"I see," Rodricks murmured to himself. "So husband No. 1 enters the case now! I wondered if he would!"
Almost immediately, however, he realized that the information was not really of much use. Dina must surely have sprayed on the perfume before Khurshed arrived. Diluted with perfume, nitrobenzene would take at least twenty-four hours to cause death! Or so the Docs said. Still, he would have to check him out. He couldn't take any chances. This poison wasn't'perfectly understood. It could probably cause different reactions in different people, depending on the individual metabolism. The Docs themselves weren't too sure!
"Did anybody else visit her on that day?" He asked the maid, who was now looking uncomfortable.
"One other man came. I have not seen him before. I heard Khurshed Sahib say it was his brother. Porus. Never seen him here before. He was very angry when he came," Fatima volunteered, once again warming to her story.
"Angry about what?" prompted Rodricks.
"That Khurshed Sahib still come to see Bibiji," was the surprisingly prompt reply, before Fatima thought it expedient to add a cautious "I think".
"Then what happened?"
"Then Khurshed Sahib leave very fast. After that man. Bibiji then go to her room and go to sleep."
The maid started sniffling again, adding mournfully, "Then, she die!"
*
Thursday, February 5, 2009
The Turning - Chapter Ten
CHAPTER TEN
Zerxes and Fredun drove off together to Zerxes' flat. Zerxes opened the latch with his key and led Fredun, visiting his home for the first time, into the cool, well-designed drawing room.
Fredun was struck by an immediate impression of space and harmony, though the room was not particularly large in size. The colour scheme was at once striking and restful. One wall was pearl gray, with a cubist mural on it in shades of bottle-green, amethyst, salmon and ivory. The two walls flanking it were painted ivory. The fourth space comprised almost totally of a huge bay window, barring a wide ledge at a height of about two feet from the floor, set with Dholpur stone, which served as a window seat. The window overlooked the expanse of the sea which right then was ablaze with the hues of the setting sun. The sliding glass panel was open, the sound of the surf bringing the ocean almost into the flat. Scherezade, who had a passion for the sea, teased Zerxes that she had initially fallen for his flat, before succumbing to his own charms!
The furniture was to the minimum. There were no curios, no photographs, no knick knacks. Just two triangular brackets set in the corners created by the gray and ivory walls, with three glass shelves, each holding one single, exquisite, piece of crystal. Pots of unusual plants and ferns were placed with cunning unconcern all over the room, giving an impression of uncultivated greenery. Fredun recognized his daughter's hand in this.
Fredun waited in the drawing room while Zerxes went to fetch Scherezade. She was in the study-cum-office, glancing idly through a paper Zerxes had been working on for a forthcoming conference. She looked up with a poignant smile as he entered.
The study was all leather and wood. Almost complete wood panelling on the walls, leather upholstery on the chairs and the couch conveniently placed next to the table. Plants had found their way into the study too, but here they submitted to the discipline of the Law.
One of the walls was completely given over to law books and reports, with a vertical, rectangular-shaped window cleft between the shelves, overlooking the sea. The half of one wall contained books on other subjects, including a few novels and books of poetry, with a sheet glass window on the top. A little away from his desk was a small conference area. The wall to the right held a unit containing a Television, a Video player and a Sansui music system, with racks full of cassettes and compact discs. Pink Floyd, Leonard Cohen and Jethro Tull rubbed jackets with Mozart, Bach and Debussy.
Scherezade had put on a CD of Chopin which she had found hiding forlornly among other less self-indulgent composers. It was the Preludes. The CD had reached No. 20, which she had designated the 'Funeral March Prelude'.
Zerxes smiled grimly as he entered the study, then his lips relaxed as he bent his head to kiss her.
"Where's your mother?" he asked.
"Oh, she saw that I was perfectly all right, and went back home. She'll have to make an evening snack for her darling son! He should be home any moment now."
Ignoring this reference to her brother, he asked, "And how are you really feeling, my love?"
"Really absolutely fine," she responded with feigned gaiety. Her face changed as she looked up into his. " Darling! What's wrong?" she asked.
"We had a visit from the police at Dina's. They say there's a possibility that she did not die of natural causes," said Zerxes quietly.
Scherezade's eyes widened. "You mean, she committed suicide?" she asked in a horrified whisper.
"The police rather seem to think she was murdered," answered Zerxes a shade dryly, caressing Scherezade's hair off her face.
"Murdered?" she echoed incredulously. "Rubbish," she went on in a brisk ~one, sounding more like her usual self. "Why should anyone want to murder her? Who would want to murder her? There's some mistake. It can't possibly be murder . . . can't." She trailed off rather uncertainly, not quite liking what the look on his face indicated. "Why, she was all alone in the. house! Except for Fatima. And surely Fatima would never. . ."
She searched his eyes for the reassurance he could not give. Then she buried her face in her hands and started sobbing. Zerxes pulled her up off the chair, enfolded her in his arms and held her while she ventilated her feelings into his sustaining shoulder. After a while he held her a little away from him, took out his handkerchief and gently wiped her wet cheeks. She smiled tremulously, the tears still spangling her curling lashes.
Zerxes smiled back, a teasing yet reassuring smile. "Crybaby," he mocked softly. "Come - your father will wonder what we're up to."
"Dad?" asked Scherezade amazed. "He's here?"
"I thought it best to bring him down here straight from Dina's. Your Jamshed Uncle took Banoo home. On the way here, I explained to Fredun that you had been here the entire night."
A gleam of mischief stole into her tawny eyes. "You did! And how did he take such a direct approach? Usually Dad deals mainly in euphemisms when it comes to subjects he'd rather avoid. Or realities he'd like to wish away," she added sarcastically.
Frowning admonitorily, he shook her a little and propelled her towards the drawing room, ordering Krishna, who had come out of the kitchen, to get some tea and snacks to the living room.
"Where's your mother?" was the first question her father asked her, adding awkwardly, "and how are you? Are you all right?"
"Mother's gone back home. And I'm fine. Perfectly all right."
Fredun looked from her tight, suddenly closed-in face to Zerxes and back. "I suppose he's told you what happened?" he asked, his tone a shade too casual.
"If you mean about Dina Fui possibly being murdered, yes he has," she replied shortly. "Though I can't imagine who would want to murder her, or why."
"No, it is somewhat inconceivable," agreed her father shortly. He rose from the divan. "Are you coming home with me?"
At that moment Krishna walked in, bearing the tea tray. Fredun reluctantly sat down again. Scherezade poured. Fredun thought to himself, almost resentfully, that she seemed more at home in Zerxes's flat than in her own house.
She had been going around with Zerxes for two years now. Ever since she had met him in Court while doing a bit of free-lance journalism, writing an article on that sensational rape case involving a socialite and the friend of her boyfriend . . .
. . . It had turned out to be a case of parental pressure pushing the girl into complaining about what had really been consensual intercourse. Scherezade had initially been all het up on behalf of the girl, furiously lashing out against the Counsel who appeared in Court for the accused. Until the girl's testimony under cross-examination convinced even the prejudiced Scherezade that the girl had been lying, and that for once the man was the victim.
She had been impressed by the handsome young lawyer's courtcraft and had requested him for an interview. The request for the interview had been declined, but an invitation to dinner had ensued.
Followed by several dinners. Music concerts. Long drives. Out of town trips. Days and nights spent together. Fredun and Rashna, initially protesting, had ultimately been compelled to accept their unconventional relationship by the unacknowledged fear that Sherrie might move in with 'that fellow', if they tried to pressurize her into anything, including marriage . . .
After tea, Fredun didn't bother to repeat his question as to whether Sherrie would be going home with him. He realized that she and Zerxes would have dinner together before he dropped her home, if at all! Reassured that she had recovered from whatever bout of illness that had apparently attacked her, Fredun left.
* * * *
In the meanwhile, Patil and Rodricks had returned to the Cuffe Parade Police Station.
Rodricks had as yet never been able to enter that Station without experiencing the feeling of being caught up in a grotesque fusion of the two utterly discordant realities of that double-faced city. The opulent affluence of the five star hotel and the World Trade Centre on one flank, representative of the world of the super-rich, bristling with unbridled consumerism; and the grim struggling existence of the garbage-strewn shanties on the other, just opposite the entrance of the Station, with halfnaked, rickety children running around, drooling saliva and snot. Their elders eking out a precarious living on the strength of their unreliable wits and by the grace of a grudging God. And the Police Station itself, nestling in the improbable setting of the verdant Colaba Woods which sprawled almost all round, nacreously struggling to smother an unseemly intrusion, but not quite succeeding.
They walked in to find Sheriyar Irani leaning on the jamb of the open door of his cabin, frowning over a document. He looked up as they neared and held it out to Patil. "Read that," he rapped out.
"The Coroner's report?" queried Patil.
"You'll have to get to work, boyos," Irani spoke with some relish, slapping his thigh. It was not often that he got the chance to investigate the murder of the second wife of a rich and influential businessman with high-level political connections.
"Yessir," he cried, once more slapping his stocky right flank resoundingly. "You'll have to get down to some real solid work. Real quick!" He looked at his two subordinates from under his remarkable brows, his small, beady black eyes looking quite fierce. "The boyos up at Sachivalaya won't like this. Won't like this at all!" he prophesied with unholy relish.
He was quite right. In the corridors of power, the wires had already started humming. More than a few brows were creased in worry among the top echelons of the Administration. The Finance Secretary buzzed the Home Secretary who, in turn, was waiting to get the connection to the Law Secretary, who was out of station in some God-forsaken place where there were no STD lines.
The buzzing graduated to the Ministers and ultimately the CM himself who picked up his telephone and asked for Prakash Sattar.
He put down the receiver after a brief, terse conversation, apparently satisfied. He was a little taken aback though, at what Sattar had to tell him. Poor chap, he thought to himself, ringing for a second cup of coffee.
It was a good thing, he told himself, that that fellow Irani was in charge of the Cuffe Parade Police Station. A bit of a rough diamond, but he normally delivered the goods. And was quite a popular figure! Moved in fairly high social circles himself. Rich wife. Lots of chickoo farms at Dahanu and all that! Knew how to handle the better placed witnesses and suspects, as well as the run-of-the-mill criminals. And probably, they'd call the DCP in. Yes, that would be a good idea!
He wrinkled his bulbous nose in an effort of memory. Let's see now, that zone meant Tagore would be the DCP concerned. The stiffrumped stickler that he was, Tagore wouldn't like it if he spoke to him directly. Tagore did not brook political interference in his work. No! Better get on to the Commissioner himself. Get him to ask Tagore to oversee the investigation.
'Oversee the investigation'! That had a nice ring to it! Gulping down his coffee, he lifted his receiver again and asked for the Commissioner of Police. Then he stared at his empty coffee cup broodingly. He didn't like the smell of this business. And Sattar was a close-mouthed bastard. One never could tell with him, he thought, suddenly a bit uneasy. Even the good Lord didn't quite know what a murder investigation might throw up! And the elections so close! He sighed and ordered another cup of coffee.
While the most important man in the State sat thus, drinking coffee and brooding over a malignant Fate, a different kind of unease had gripped Jamshed and Banoo Maa.
Jamshed had persuaded Banoo Maa to have dinner with him and Shirin that night. Tehmul was dining out with an old school friend who had come over from Canada. Even Shirin's notions of propriety had not been offended by her son having a private dinner with an old school friend. That could not be termed 'dining out', she made the nice distinction in her mind.
Banoo Maa's tired mind had rebelled at the thought of having dinner that night of all nights, in Shirin's company. She did not mind Jamshed so much. Then she was guiltily ashamed of such thoughts. Shirin, irritating though she was, meant well. Banoo Maa felt guilty enough to accept the invitation.
Jamshed opened the door with his latch-key, ushered the old lady in, and called out to his wife. There was no response. Thinking she was in the kitchen, Jamshed made his way there, calling out her name again.
To get to the kitchen, he had to cross the passage past their bedroom. They had only one bedroom. Tehmul slept in the living room, converting the sofa there into a bed at night. The bedroom door was open, and through the bead curtain, a legacy from his wife's grandmother to all her grandchildren, he saw Shirin in front of the dressing table.
She seemed to have slumped on the chair, her head resting on the table against the tall mirror. Jamshed hurried in, calling out to Banoo Maa who followed him, alarmed at his tone. Shirin was semi-conscious, rambling incoherently. Banoo Maa caught something about 'a terrible headache'. Something about 'not a nice scent'. Whatever that meant!
Jamshed half carried, half dragged his wife gently onto the bed. He found Banoo Maa staring thoughtfully at the dressing table. His eyes followed her gaze, and frowned at what he saw. He shrugged, exchanged a rueful glance with her and went to the bedside cabinet to get some Eau de Cologne.
"I think I'll see if we can get hold of Dr. Dhondy," he told Banoo Maa, sprinkling the Cologne liberally on Shirin's forehead.
Banoo Maa did not answer. She had come to a quick decision. She rang up Fredun's place and asked to speak to Sherrie. She wanted Zerxes Avari's telephone number.
Rashna, who answered the telephone, informed her that Sherrie was still at Zerxes' and gave her the number. "What's up?" she asked casually.
"Shirin seems to be a bit unwell," replied Banoo.
"Oh! Fredun's not back, yet. Shall I ask him to come over, when he gets back?"
"No, but I'll let you know if it's anything serious. It may be nothing more than just a very severe headache." When she spoke to Zerxes, however, Banoo Maa did not try to hide her apprehension. She requested Zerxes to rush over, if he could. Fredun had just left from Zerxes' to go home.
Zerxes and Scherezade were over at Jamshed's within twenty minutes. Before leaving, he had called for an ambulance with directions to Jamshed's flat, overriding Scherezade's protests that they should at least have a look at Shirin Fui, before rushing the poor thing to a hospital. "She's a bit of a hypochondriac as well," she had ended.
"As well as what?" Zerxes had asked, looking at her narrowly. His 'cross-examining' look, as she called it!
Scherezade had hesitated. "Well, I'm not absolutely certain, but at times both Firdauz and I have felt she's a bit of a kleptomaniac. Nothing very serious, but she does pinch small things which catch her fancy. From people's homes."
"I see," Zerxes had looked thoughtful. "I think darling, let's not take any chances. In any case, at the hospital they'll give her a thorough check up, which can't do her any harm. Especially at her age. I'll see if I can get hold of Subhash again."
Fortunately, he could. Zerxes had requested him to come over to the Parsee General Hospital directly. "Be there at the reception. We may need you to get her admitted."
"I'll speak to the RMO beforehand," Sub hash had promised. "What's the lady's name, again?"
As soon as they reached the Dumasia residence, Zerxes explained what he had arranged. Jamshed was too bemused to protest. Scherezade went into the bedroom and sat next to Banoo Maa, on Shirin's bed. Shirin was beginning to turn blue. She was now glad that Zerxes had overridden her protests and called for the ambulance. Her gaze idly swept the dressing table, and she suddenly stiffened, catching sight of the bottle.
She remembered Dina Fui wearing 'Joy' perfume on her birthday. "A birthday gift from Prakash", Dina had said carelessly.
Noticing the direction of her gaze, Banoo Maa chuckled grimly. "Yes, she could not resist it! What use is perfume to Dina, now? It seems to be a new bottle too! She must have picked it up when she went into her room alone. Poor Shirin!" sighed the old lady. "I've tried so hard to cure her of that habit!"
Zerxes and Jamshed came into the bedroom. Banoo Maa rose, asked Jamshed for a bag, and started packing a few of Shirin's clothes and essentials into it. Jamshed too packed a small bag for himself. He'd be staying at the hospital, at least that first night.
Scherezade told Zerxes, in a whisper, about Shirin having pinched Dina's perfume bottle. The expression in his face gave nothing away, but she did not miss the sudden gleam of interest in his generally hard green eyes. Underneath that casual, almost indifferent exterior, Zerxes was thinking to himself, "Dammitall, there's no way I can stay clear of this, now! I'll have to take a hand in it. Maybe get Dad to give his opinion." His eyes met Scherezade's, looking up into his face, puzzled. He brushed a stray tendril off her forehead. The simple gesture seemed toreassure her. His touch had that effect on her. It was a balm as well as a stimulant.
Zerxes went up to the dressing table, unscrewed the bottle of 'Joy' and took a swift, tentative sniff before screwing on the top again. Watching him, Scherezade's eyes widened in horror. "Zerx . . . you don't think. . . it isn't possible. . .?"
"Hush, foolish child," laying a finger against her lips. "We'll talk about it later."
She caught his hand in both her small ones, giving it a tight squeeze. Her mind went back to Dina's saree. The one she had buried her face in, before she suddenly felt ill. That had reeked of 'Joy' perfume! Her eyes went again to the bottle of 'Joy' on Shirin's cluttered dressing table, among bottles of different brands of face cream and rather grimy looking lipsticks.
The ambulance and Dr. Dhondy arrived together. Peeved at being pre-empted, Dhondy allowed himself to be soothed by Scherezade's charming flattery. Jamshed and Banoo Maa went in the ambulance with Shirin. Jamshed had given the house-keys to Zerxes to lock up. Zerxes called up Fredun. Then, after Dhondy had taken himself off, he telephoned the Cuffe Parade Police Station. As he had expected, Patil and Rodricks were still there.
* * * *
Seated behind his large desk in his spartan office, Patil had read the PM report through and passed it over to Rodricks who glanced through it speedily and looked back at Patil, eyebrows raised, an expression of almost comical dismay on his face.
"Well!" he breathed exaggeratedly. "Talk about a high class, recondite murder! Aniline . . . benzene . . . nitrobenzene . . . what the hell is this stuff?"
A hint of amusement crept into Patil's normally austere eyes. "1 thought you were looking for something unusual, Drew," he remarked, a touch of malice edging his carefully bland tone.
Unlike the phlegmatic Avinash Patil, Andrew Rodricks had had dreams of entangling with desperate terrorists and matching wits with ingenious murderers, when he had stunned his family by joining the Police Force a couple of years ago, after his post-graduation in psychology. He had not really expected to realize his ambition of getting his teeth into a 'real killer of a murder case', as he put it, so early in his career! And he was to be the Investigating Officer!
Aniline. . . benzene. . . nitro-benzene. . . !
"Parsley sage, rosemary and thyme," he hummed inappositely, the half forgotten song of his college days coming back to him rather inappropriately at that moment. Now why the hell should he suddenly think of that?
It was at that moment, that the telephone bell shrilled.
Patil picked up the receiver and spoke into it. A lazy, distinctive voice floated down the wire. "Inspector Patil? So glad to have caught you in, Inspector. Are you in the mood to take a trip?"
* * * *
On the way to Jamshed Dumasia's house in the police jeep, Patil's mind went back to certain paragraphs of the report, now suddenly intelligible in the light of what Avari had briefly told him over the telephone.
"There are traces of aniline in the brain, and in the blood," he had read in the autopsy report. "There has been clear formation of methaemoglobin in the blood, pointing to the possibility of some form of benzene poisoning. Could be benzene, could be nitrobenzene, could be aniline. The poison was not ingested by the deceased. It was absorbed through the skin, and by inhalation of vapour containing the toxic substance. The vapour of all the three substances mentioned earlier is extremely toxic and noxious. Also, it can be absorbed through the skin, causing cyanosis due to the deoxygenation of the haemoglobin in the blood, so that oxygen is no longer transported to the vital organs of the body, resulting in respiratory failure, and ultimately death."
In such a case, normally, the medium through which the poison had been administered would have been almost impossible to trace, mused Patil. This was almost certainly a case of chronic poisoning. Such cases were the nightmare of the investigating agencies: not only the medium, even the time of the actual poisoning was impossible to fix, rendering every alibi suspect! According to the Docs, the time taken by benzene or nitrobenzene, or aniline (which was a product of nitrobenzene, formed by chemical reaction), to cause death differed from person to person, depending upon individual metabolism, the amount imbibed, the level of dilution, etc. . . it could take a few hours, or even a few days!
Patil admitted to Rodricks that they might well have cause to be thankful to Avari! "Normally, he's busy getting in our way, criticizing our procedure and getting the blokes off in Court. This time, it appears at least that he's trying to help us. I wonder why!"
"I wouldn't trust him an inch," muttered Rodricks darkly."Reminds me of a cobra. All coiled, and ready to strike! Green eyed too," he added, with a prejudice strange in one normally so liberalminded.
Zerxes and Scherezade had waited until Patil and Rodricks arrived at the Dumasias' flat and picked up the bottle of 'Joy' perfume for analysis. Then they had raced over to the hospital. Shirin was showing signs of improvement. They'd taken a sample of her blood for chemical and spectroscopic examination, at Dr. Subhash Chitaley's insistence. Which had been prompted by Zerxes.
* * * *
Zerxes' guess was proved to be correct, the next day. Laboratory analysis showed that the poison was in the bottle of 'Joy' perfume. And it was nitrobenzene.
As to the presence of that bottle in Shirin Dumasia's bedroom, well, Avari and Scherezade Vatcha both had given the explanation for that. But they'd have to question Shirin Dumasia herself and also her husband, later on.
But now, for Mr. Prakash Sattar!
*
Zerxes and Fredun drove off together to Zerxes' flat. Zerxes opened the latch with his key and led Fredun, visiting his home for the first time, into the cool, well-designed drawing room.
Fredun was struck by an immediate impression of space and harmony, though the room was not particularly large in size. The colour scheme was at once striking and restful. One wall was pearl gray, with a cubist mural on it in shades of bottle-green, amethyst, salmon and ivory. The two walls flanking it were painted ivory. The fourth space comprised almost totally of a huge bay window, barring a wide ledge at a height of about two feet from the floor, set with Dholpur stone, which served as a window seat. The window overlooked the expanse of the sea which right then was ablaze with the hues of the setting sun. The sliding glass panel was open, the sound of the surf bringing the ocean almost into the flat. Scherezade, who had a passion for the sea, teased Zerxes that she had initially fallen for his flat, before succumbing to his own charms!
The furniture was to the minimum. There were no curios, no photographs, no knick knacks. Just two triangular brackets set in the corners created by the gray and ivory walls, with three glass shelves, each holding one single, exquisite, piece of crystal. Pots of unusual plants and ferns were placed with cunning unconcern all over the room, giving an impression of uncultivated greenery. Fredun recognized his daughter's hand in this.
Fredun waited in the drawing room while Zerxes went to fetch Scherezade. She was in the study-cum-office, glancing idly through a paper Zerxes had been working on for a forthcoming conference. She looked up with a poignant smile as he entered.
The study was all leather and wood. Almost complete wood panelling on the walls, leather upholstery on the chairs and the couch conveniently placed next to the table. Plants had found their way into the study too, but here they submitted to the discipline of the Law.
One of the walls was completely given over to law books and reports, with a vertical, rectangular-shaped window cleft between the shelves, overlooking the sea. The half of one wall contained books on other subjects, including a few novels and books of poetry, with a sheet glass window on the top. A little away from his desk was a small conference area. The wall to the right held a unit containing a Television, a Video player and a Sansui music system, with racks full of cassettes and compact discs. Pink Floyd, Leonard Cohen and Jethro Tull rubbed jackets with Mozart, Bach and Debussy.
Scherezade had put on a CD of Chopin which she had found hiding forlornly among other less self-indulgent composers. It was the Preludes. The CD had reached No. 20, which she had designated the 'Funeral March Prelude'.
Zerxes smiled grimly as he entered the study, then his lips relaxed as he bent his head to kiss her.
"Where's your mother?" he asked.
"Oh, she saw that I was perfectly all right, and went back home. She'll have to make an evening snack for her darling son! He should be home any moment now."
Ignoring this reference to her brother, he asked, "And how are you really feeling, my love?"
"Really absolutely fine," she responded with feigned gaiety. Her face changed as she looked up into his. " Darling! What's wrong?" she asked.
"We had a visit from the police at Dina's. They say there's a possibility that she did not die of natural causes," said Zerxes quietly.
Scherezade's eyes widened. "You mean, she committed suicide?" she asked in a horrified whisper.
"The police rather seem to think she was murdered," answered Zerxes a shade dryly, caressing Scherezade's hair off her face.
"Murdered?" she echoed incredulously. "Rubbish," she went on in a brisk ~one, sounding more like her usual self. "Why should anyone want to murder her? Who would want to murder her? There's some mistake. It can't possibly be murder . . . can't." She trailed off rather uncertainly, not quite liking what the look on his face indicated. "Why, she was all alone in the. house! Except for Fatima. And surely Fatima would never. . ."
She searched his eyes for the reassurance he could not give. Then she buried her face in her hands and started sobbing. Zerxes pulled her up off the chair, enfolded her in his arms and held her while she ventilated her feelings into his sustaining shoulder. After a while he held her a little away from him, took out his handkerchief and gently wiped her wet cheeks. She smiled tremulously, the tears still spangling her curling lashes.
Zerxes smiled back, a teasing yet reassuring smile. "Crybaby," he mocked softly. "Come - your father will wonder what we're up to."
"Dad?" asked Scherezade amazed. "He's here?"
"I thought it best to bring him down here straight from Dina's. Your Jamshed Uncle took Banoo home. On the way here, I explained to Fredun that you had been here the entire night."
A gleam of mischief stole into her tawny eyes. "You did! And how did he take such a direct approach? Usually Dad deals mainly in euphemisms when it comes to subjects he'd rather avoid. Or realities he'd like to wish away," she added sarcastically.
Frowning admonitorily, he shook her a little and propelled her towards the drawing room, ordering Krishna, who had come out of the kitchen, to get some tea and snacks to the living room.
"Where's your mother?" was the first question her father asked her, adding awkwardly, "and how are you? Are you all right?"
"Mother's gone back home. And I'm fine. Perfectly all right."
Fredun looked from her tight, suddenly closed-in face to Zerxes and back. "I suppose he's told you what happened?" he asked, his tone a shade too casual.
"If you mean about Dina Fui possibly being murdered, yes he has," she replied shortly. "Though I can't imagine who would want to murder her, or why."
"No, it is somewhat inconceivable," agreed her father shortly. He rose from the divan. "Are you coming home with me?"
At that moment Krishna walked in, bearing the tea tray. Fredun reluctantly sat down again. Scherezade poured. Fredun thought to himself, almost resentfully, that she seemed more at home in Zerxes's flat than in her own house.
She had been going around with Zerxes for two years now. Ever since she had met him in Court while doing a bit of free-lance journalism, writing an article on that sensational rape case involving a socialite and the friend of her boyfriend . . .
. . . It had turned out to be a case of parental pressure pushing the girl into complaining about what had really been consensual intercourse. Scherezade had initially been all het up on behalf of the girl, furiously lashing out against the Counsel who appeared in Court for the accused. Until the girl's testimony under cross-examination convinced even the prejudiced Scherezade that the girl had been lying, and that for once the man was the victim.
She had been impressed by the handsome young lawyer's courtcraft and had requested him for an interview. The request for the interview had been declined, but an invitation to dinner had ensued.
Followed by several dinners. Music concerts. Long drives. Out of town trips. Days and nights spent together. Fredun and Rashna, initially protesting, had ultimately been compelled to accept their unconventional relationship by the unacknowledged fear that Sherrie might move in with 'that fellow', if they tried to pressurize her into anything, including marriage . . .
After tea, Fredun didn't bother to repeat his question as to whether Sherrie would be going home with him. He realized that she and Zerxes would have dinner together before he dropped her home, if at all! Reassured that she had recovered from whatever bout of illness that had apparently attacked her, Fredun left.
* * * *
In the meanwhile, Patil and Rodricks had returned to the Cuffe Parade Police Station.
Rodricks had as yet never been able to enter that Station without experiencing the feeling of being caught up in a grotesque fusion of the two utterly discordant realities of that double-faced city. The opulent affluence of the five star hotel and the World Trade Centre on one flank, representative of the world of the super-rich, bristling with unbridled consumerism; and the grim struggling existence of the garbage-strewn shanties on the other, just opposite the entrance of the Station, with halfnaked, rickety children running around, drooling saliva and snot. Their elders eking out a precarious living on the strength of their unreliable wits and by the grace of a grudging God. And the Police Station itself, nestling in the improbable setting of the verdant Colaba Woods which sprawled almost all round, nacreously struggling to smother an unseemly intrusion, but not quite succeeding.
They walked in to find Sheriyar Irani leaning on the jamb of the open door of his cabin, frowning over a document. He looked up as they neared and held it out to Patil. "Read that," he rapped out.
"The Coroner's report?" queried Patil.
"You'll have to get to work, boyos," Irani spoke with some relish, slapping his thigh. It was not often that he got the chance to investigate the murder of the second wife of a rich and influential businessman with high-level political connections.
"Yessir," he cried, once more slapping his stocky right flank resoundingly. "You'll have to get down to some real solid work. Real quick!" He looked at his two subordinates from under his remarkable brows, his small, beady black eyes looking quite fierce. "The boyos up at Sachivalaya won't like this. Won't like this at all!" he prophesied with unholy relish.
He was quite right. In the corridors of power, the wires had already started humming. More than a few brows were creased in worry among the top echelons of the Administration. The Finance Secretary buzzed the Home Secretary who, in turn, was waiting to get the connection to the Law Secretary, who was out of station in some God-forsaken place where there were no STD lines.
The buzzing graduated to the Ministers and ultimately the CM himself who picked up his telephone and asked for Prakash Sattar.
He put down the receiver after a brief, terse conversation, apparently satisfied. He was a little taken aback though, at what Sattar had to tell him. Poor chap, he thought to himself, ringing for a second cup of coffee.
It was a good thing, he told himself, that that fellow Irani was in charge of the Cuffe Parade Police Station. A bit of a rough diamond, but he normally delivered the goods. And was quite a popular figure! Moved in fairly high social circles himself. Rich wife. Lots of chickoo farms at Dahanu and all that! Knew how to handle the better placed witnesses and suspects, as well as the run-of-the-mill criminals. And probably, they'd call the DCP in. Yes, that would be a good idea!
He wrinkled his bulbous nose in an effort of memory. Let's see now, that zone meant Tagore would be the DCP concerned. The stiffrumped stickler that he was, Tagore wouldn't like it if he spoke to him directly. Tagore did not brook political interference in his work. No! Better get on to the Commissioner himself. Get him to ask Tagore to oversee the investigation.
'Oversee the investigation'! That had a nice ring to it! Gulping down his coffee, he lifted his receiver again and asked for the Commissioner of Police. Then he stared at his empty coffee cup broodingly. He didn't like the smell of this business. And Sattar was a close-mouthed bastard. One never could tell with him, he thought, suddenly a bit uneasy. Even the good Lord didn't quite know what a murder investigation might throw up! And the elections so close! He sighed and ordered another cup of coffee.
While the most important man in the State sat thus, drinking coffee and brooding over a malignant Fate, a different kind of unease had gripped Jamshed and Banoo Maa.
Jamshed had persuaded Banoo Maa to have dinner with him and Shirin that night. Tehmul was dining out with an old school friend who had come over from Canada. Even Shirin's notions of propriety had not been offended by her son having a private dinner with an old school friend. That could not be termed 'dining out', she made the nice distinction in her mind.
Banoo Maa's tired mind had rebelled at the thought of having dinner that night of all nights, in Shirin's company. She did not mind Jamshed so much. Then she was guiltily ashamed of such thoughts. Shirin, irritating though she was, meant well. Banoo Maa felt guilty enough to accept the invitation.
Jamshed opened the door with his latch-key, ushered the old lady in, and called out to his wife. There was no response. Thinking she was in the kitchen, Jamshed made his way there, calling out her name again.
To get to the kitchen, he had to cross the passage past their bedroom. They had only one bedroom. Tehmul slept in the living room, converting the sofa there into a bed at night. The bedroom door was open, and through the bead curtain, a legacy from his wife's grandmother to all her grandchildren, he saw Shirin in front of the dressing table.
She seemed to have slumped on the chair, her head resting on the table against the tall mirror. Jamshed hurried in, calling out to Banoo Maa who followed him, alarmed at his tone. Shirin was semi-conscious, rambling incoherently. Banoo Maa caught something about 'a terrible headache'. Something about 'not a nice scent'. Whatever that meant!
Jamshed half carried, half dragged his wife gently onto the bed. He found Banoo Maa staring thoughtfully at the dressing table. His eyes followed her gaze, and frowned at what he saw. He shrugged, exchanged a rueful glance with her and went to the bedside cabinet to get some Eau de Cologne.
"I think I'll see if we can get hold of Dr. Dhondy," he told Banoo Maa, sprinkling the Cologne liberally on Shirin's forehead.
Banoo Maa did not answer. She had come to a quick decision. She rang up Fredun's place and asked to speak to Sherrie. She wanted Zerxes Avari's telephone number.
Rashna, who answered the telephone, informed her that Sherrie was still at Zerxes' and gave her the number. "What's up?" she asked casually.
"Shirin seems to be a bit unwell," replied Banoo.
"Oh! Fredun's not back, yet. Shall I ask him to come over, when he gets back?"
"No, but I'll let you know if it's anything serious. It may be nothing more than just a very severe headache." When she spoke to Zerxes, however, Banoo Maa did not try to hide her apprehension. She requested Zerxes to rush over, if he could. Fredun had just left from Zerxes' to go home.
Zerxes and Scherezade were over at Jamshed's within twenty minutes. Before leaving, he had called for an ambulance with directions to Jamshed's flat, overriding Scherezade's protests that they should at least have a look at Shirin Fui, before rushing the poor thing to a hospital. "She's a bit of a hypochondriac as well," she had ended.
"As well as what?" Zerxes had asked, looking at her narrowly. His 'cross-examining' look, as she called it!
Scherezade had hesitated. "Well, I'm not absolutely certain, but at times both Firdauz and I have felt she's a bit of a kleptomaniac. Nothing very serious, but she does pinch small things which catch her fancy. From people's homes."
"I see," Zerxes had looked thoughtful. "I think darling, let's not take any chances. In any case, at the hospital they'll give her a thorough check up, which can't do her any harm. Especially at her age. I'll see if I can get hold of Subhash again."
Fortunately, he could. Zerxes had requested him to come over to the Parsee General Hospital directly. "Be there at the reception. We may need you to get her admitted."
"I'll speak to the RMO beforehand," Sub hash had promised. "What's the lady's name, again?"
As soon as they reached the Dumasia residence, Zerxes explained what he had arranged. Jamshed was too bemused to protest. Scherezade went into the bedroom and sat next to Banoo Maa, on Shirin's bed. Shirin was beginning to turn blue. She was now glad that Zerxes had overridden her protests and called for the ambulance. Her gaze idly swept the dressing table, and she suddenly stiffened, catching sight of the bottle.
She remembered Dina Fui wearing 'Joy' perfume on her birthday. "A birthday gift from Prakash", Dina had said carelessly.
Noticing the direction of her gaze, Banoo Maa chuckled grimly. "Yes, she could not resist it! What use is perfume to Dina, now? It seems to be a new bottle too! She must have picked it up when she went into her room alone. Poor Shirin!" sighed the old lady. "I've tried so hard to cure her of that habit!"
Zerxes and Jamshed came into the bedroom. Banoo Maa rose, asked Jamshed for a bag, and started packing a few of Shirin's clothes and essentials into it. Jamshed too packed a small bag for himself. He'd be staying at the hospital, at least that first night.
Scherezade told Zerxes, in a whisper, about Shirin having pinched Dina's perfume bottle. The expression in his face gave nothing away, but she did not miss the sudden gleam of interest in his generally hard green eyes. Underneath that casual, almost indifferent exterior, Zerxes was thinking to himself, "Dammitall, there's no way I can stay clear of this, now! I'll have to take a hand in it. Maybe get Dad to give his opinion." His eyes met Scherezade's, looking up into his face, puzzled. He brushed a stray tendril off her forehead. The simple gesture seemed toreassure her. His touch had that effect on her. It was a balm as well as a stimulant.
Zerxes went up to the dressing table, unscrewed the bottle of 'Joy' and took a swift, tentative sniff before screwing on the top again. Watching him, Scherezade's eyes widened in horror. "Zerx . . . you don't think. . . it isn't possible. . .?"
"Hush, foolish child," laying a finger against her lips. "We'll talk about it later."
She caught his hand in both her small ones, giving it a tight squeeze. Her mind went back to Dina's saree. The one she had buried her face in, before she suddenly felt ill. That had reeked of 'Joy' perfume! Her eyes went again to the bottle of 'Joy' on Shirin's cluttered dressing table, among bottles of different brands of face cream and rather grimy looking lipsticks.
The ambulance and Dr. Dhondy arrived together. Peeved at being pre-empted, Dhondy allowed himself to be soothed by Scherezade's charming flattery. Jamshed and Banoo Maa went in the ambulance with Shirin. Jamshed had given the house-keys to Zerxes to lock up. Zerxes called up Fredun. Then, after Dhondy had taken himself off, he telephoned the Cuffe Parade Police Station. As he had expected, Patil and Rodricks were still there.
* * * *
Seated behind his large desk in his spartan office, Patil had read the PM report through and passed it over to Rodricks who glanced through it speedily and looked back at Patil, eyebrows raised, an expression of almost comical dismay on his face.
"Well!" he breathed exaggeratedly. "Talk about a high class, recondite murder! Aniline . . . benzene . . . nitrobenzene . . . what the hell is this stuff?"
A hint of amusement crept into Patil's normally austere eyes. "1 thought you were looking for something unusual, Drew," he remarked, a touch of malice edging his carefully bland tone.
Unlike the phlegmatic Avinash Patil, Andrew Rodricks had had dreams of entangling with desperate terrorists and matching wits with ingenious murderers, when he had stunned his family by joining the Police Force a couple of years ago, after his post-graduation in psychology. He had not really expected to realize his ambition of getting his teeth into a 'real killer of a murder case', as he put it, so early in his career! And he was to be the Investigating Officer!
Aniline. . . benzene. . . nitro-benzene. . . !
"Parsley sage, rosemary and thyme," he hummed inappositely, the half forgotten song of his college days coming back to him rather inappropriately at that moment. Now why the hell should he suddenly think of that?
It was at that moment, that the telephone bell shrilled.
Patil picked up the receiver and spoke into it. A lazy, distinctive voice floated down the wire. "Inspector Patil? So glad to have caught you in, Inspector. Are you in the mood to take a trip?"
* * * *
On the way to Jamshed Dumasia's house in the police jeep, Patil's mind went back to certain paragraphs of the report, now suddenly intelligible in the light of what Avari had briefly told him over the telephone.
"There are traces of aniline in the brain, and in the blood," he had read in the autopsy report. "There has been clear formation of methaemoglobin in the blood, pointing to the possibility of some form of benzene poisoning. Could be benzene, could be nitrobenzene, could be aniline. The poison was not ingested by the deceased. It was absorbed through the skin, and by inhalation of vapour containing the toxic substance. The vapour of all the three substances mentioned earlier is extremely toxic and noxious. Also, it can be absorbed through the skin, causing cyanosis due to the deoxygenation of the haemoglobin in the blood, so that oxygen is no longer transported to the vital organs of the body, resulting in respiratory failure, and ultimately death."
In such a case, normally, the medium through which the poison had been administered would have been almost impossible to trace, mused Patil. This was almost certainly a case of chronic poisoning. Such cases were the nightmare of the investigating agencies: not only the medium, even the time of the actual poisoning was impossible to fix, rendering every alibi suspect! According to the Docs, the time taken by benzene or nitrobenzene, or aniline (which was a product of nitrobenzene, formed by chemical reaction), to cause death differed from person to person, depending upon individual metabolism, the amount imbibed, the level of dilution, etc. . . it could take a few hours, or even a few days!
Patil admitted to Rodricks that they might well have cause to be thankful to Avari! "Normally, he's busy getting in our way, criticizing our procedure and getting the blokes off in Court. This time, it appears at least that he's trying to help us. I wonder why!"
"I wouldn't trust him an inch," muttered Rodricks darkly."Reminds me of a cobra. All coiled, and ready to strike! Green eyed too," he added, with a prejudice strange in one normally so liberalminded.
Zerxes and Scherezade had waited until Patil and Rodricks arrived at the Dumasias' flat and picked up the bottle of 'Joy' perfume for analysis. Then they had raced over to the hospital. Shirin was showing signs of improvement. They'd taken a sample of her blood for chemical and spectroscopic examination, at Dr. Subhash Chitaley's insistence. Which had been prompted by Zerxes.
* * * *
Zerxes' guess was proved to be correct, the next day. Laboratory analysis showed that the poison was in the bottle of 'Joy' perfume. And it was nitrobenzene.
As to the presence of that bottle in Shirin Dumasia's bedroom, well, Avari and Scherezade Vatcha both had given the explanation for that. But they'd have to question Shirin Dumasia herself and also her husband, later on.
But now, for Mr. Prakash Sattar!
*
Saturday, January 10, 2009
The Turning - Chapter Six
CHAPTER SIX
On June 26, her birthday, Dina awoke to the alarum of a deafening clap of thunder, and was astonished to find that it was already past 9.
The monsoon that year was even more erratic than usual. Days of bright sunshine would be followed by a sudden deluge, which would last a day or two.
June 26, 1994 was a wet, gloomy day. All signs of the sun had been successfully obscured by the heavy downpour that roared furiously from a gray sky. Noisy gusts of rain-laden wind blew into Dina's bedroom, causing the lace curtains to writhe in wild frenzy, and made the connecting door between her bedroom and Prakash's rattle.
The persistent knocking ultimately made Dina realize that it was Prakash, and not the wind, rattling the connecting door. Prakash was awaiting her permission to enter.
Pulling the bedclothes more securely around her, she bade him enter.
"Happy Birthday," he said, sitting down on the edge of the bed, giving her cheek a hurried peck and thrusting a package into her hand at the same time. "I hope you like it. It's. . . er perfume again," he said almost apologetically, thinking of the bottle of 'L' Air Du Temps' his secretary had got last year, when he had asked her to go and get a bottle of perfume for his wife. The light, summery scent was about the most unsuitable for Dina's personality! But there had been no help for it.
This year he had played safe. Asked his peon to go and get a large bottle of 'Joy'. The gift-wrapping had been done by the secretary. For the last couple of years, his imagination had been unable to go beyond a bottle of perfume when it came to choosing gifts for his wife.
Dina's lips curved into the semblance of a smile. She had no illusions about the amount of time and thought expended by Prakash in choosing her birthday present.
"That's all right," she said in reply to his sheepish semi-apology, her eyes on the silver-wrapped package he had pressed into her hand. Looking up at him she said quietly, "It's the thought that counts."
For some reason, that remark annoyed him and added to his sense of guilt where she was concerned. For a brief moment, he fantasized Sonali sitting on the bed where Dina sat: her long hair rippling down her shoulders, her liquid eyes smouldering with a fire Dina had never known. With something of a shock, it suddenly struck him that he and Dina had never been able to sexually climax with each other. Whereas with Sonali . . .
. . . "Prakash, don't," she had giggled, the first time he had undressed her.
Her 'Don't' was an invitation. She never said 'Do!' Her husky voice was an allure in itself. . . unlike Dina's clipped, often sarcastic tones. And as for her body . . . not that Dina was bad, but Sonali was lush . . . voluptuous! And she knew how to drown a man in the honey of her tongue as well as the treacle of her lips . . . she was soft, seemingly subservient; while Dina was almost aggressive, putting him on the defensive where his own sexuality was concerned.
Dina threatened his maleness; Sonali flattered it. He remembered those clandestine hours stolen from his work, at her clinic . . . on her couch. . . on the patient bed. . . ultimately, on the floor, to give full rein to Sonali's expertise. . . she was like a Khajuraho statue come to life, thought the besotted Prakash, after Sonali had initiated him into yet another way of making love . . . he had no idea it could be such fun in the standing position, with his back against the wall, one leg straddling her soft, yielding hips, the other supporting her rounded thigh, her long fingers guiding him expertly, unerringly, while she gyrated rythmically against him, as agile as a belly-dancer . . .
He got off her bed. Dina's bed. "I'll go and shower, then we'll have a quiet breakfast before your family descends upon us." Now he hadn't meant to say that about her family. But it had slipped out. Shrugging with mental resignation at the hopelessness of it all, he went back to his own room.
Dina slowly untied the gold thread, unwrapped the silver wrapping paper and opened the bottle of perfume after he had left. 'Joy'! At least he had chosen the right perfume this time, she mused wryly.
It had gone wrong. It had all gone wrong with Prakash too, almost since the Nikah. They had been lovers before, but then their relationship had had a different flavour altogether! Prakash was one of those men for whom the chase is more thrilling than the conquest. Shortly after marriage had ended the reason for that marriage. And as Dina became more and more aggressive, both in bed and out of it, Prakash, with purely chauvinistic notions about women,
was repulsed by her almost to a stage where he couldn't perform. And he began to blame Dina, hate her, for that. Adding to Dina's bitterness.And exacerbating her feelings of guilt.
The breakfast a deux brought to Prakash's mind hazily, the words of an almost forgotten Neil Diamond song. Something about a man and a woman and no words between them. No conversation. That was the situation between him and Dina, now. No conversation. Just resentful silences on her part, a rising, resolutely curbed frustration on his. Relieved only by the moments snatched with Sonali. And the time spent with.. .
The telephone bell shrilled, breaking into his thoughts. It was for Dina, said Fatima. Dina rose from the breakfast table and passed through the bead-curtained door into the drawing room to take it. She looked slightly flustered when she returned. Prakash looked at her narrowly. He had a shrewd suspicion of who had been on the line. Well, he did not care! Not any longer. He did not have much time left for caring, one way or another. Soon all this would end, he told himself almost thankfully, his mind going back to what the Doctor had told him. Subsequently confirmed by a tearful Sonali.
The doorbell rang. Fatima woodenly announced that a lady called Nivedita Shahane had come to see Dina Memsahib.
Casting a glance at Dina's set face, Prakash told Fatima, "Ask her to wait in the Hall. The Memsahib will be with her shortly." He then steeled himself to meet Dina's eyes.
"You knew she was coming." It was a statement. Dina managed to turn it into an accusation as well.
"She is keen to build bridges now. She thought the best way to start would be to come and wish you on your birthday." His words sounded hollow even to himself. His tone betrayed the struggle to remain casual.
"When did she tell you this?"
"She telephoned me earlier, while you were asleep."
Dina looked at him steadily. "You hadn't gone out of town for work." Again, it was a statement. And the accusation even more evident.
He drained his coffee and rose. "! don't wish to have any arguments with you today. You may think what you choose. But Nivedita's in a slightly sensitive frame of mind right now. At least try and pretend to return her sentiments." There, now that's tom it, he told himself wryly. Might as well have admitted where he'd been, the last couple of days!
He had to pass the Hall, (he had persistently resisted all Dina's efforts to get him to call it 'drawing room'), to get to his room. Both the bedrooms, his and Dina's, opened out into the Hall, apart from being internally connected with each other. On the other side of the flat, the bedrooms opened out onto the balcony which also led directly to the small lobby which was the main entrance, often used by Dina as a get-away, if Prakash was entertaining some of his business cronies in the the Hall. The Hall was designed as a central focus, opening out into two of the four bedrooms, the dining room, and the lobby leading to the entrance.
Nivedita was hovering near the door of Dina's bedroom, rummaging in her handbag for something. At his "Hallo," she started violently and looked up almost guiltily. "The child's nerves are shot to pieces," thought Prakash to himself worriedly. "I wonder if she realizes what she is getting into, wanting to meet Dina in this frame of mind!"
"Do you want me to be here when you meet her?" he asked his daughter gently.
"N..no," she stammered somewhat breathlessly. "I think it's better if I do it on my own."
Prakash went back to his room and started packing. He had to leave for Poona in the evening. Hence the lunch party with her family, instead of the more convenient dinner. As it was a Sunday, that had been possible.
Jamshed had retired a year ago as the Headmaster of a reputed boys' school; his wife had never worked in her life; their son Tehmul worked in a Bank; Fredun worked for a fairly reputed private limited company as the General Manager (Finance); no school for Rashna, who was a teacher in a girls' school. Scherezade was a trainee copywriter in one of the larger, more reputed ad agencies, having joined just about a couple of months ago. Zerxes was a rapidly rising criminal lawyer, acquiring a formidable reputation for cross-examination. Both he and Scherezade often worked on Sundays for a few hours, mostly at Zerxes' home, in his study. But they'd agreed to make an exception on Dina's birthday.
Dina was determined to preserve appearances in front of her family members. They mustn't know that this marriage too had failed. Else she'd never live it down, she thought to herself, blanching at the thought of the malicious "I told you so's" that she was sure would ensue.
By around noon, Dina had still not come out of her room. Prakash knocked on her door. "What time are your people coming?" he shouted through the closed door.
"Around one o'clock," replied Dina, coming out of the bedroom, fully dressed. She led the way to the drawing room.
"Er.. how did the meeting with Nivedita go?" asked Prakash hesitantly.
"It didn't," was the cryptic reply.
"Meaning?" asked Prakash puzzled, a hint of foreboding stealing into him.
"Meaning that she appeared to have changed her mind about wanting to 'build bridges', and had disappeared by the time I left the dining room and went out into the Drawing Room," responded Dina acidly.
"Poor child, her nerve must have failed her at the last moment," murmured Prakash.
"Possibly," answered Dina in a tone indicating clearly that she wished to have no further discussion on the subject.
* * * *
Nivedita had rushed home and wandered out onto her sanctum, the terrace. She glared in vexation at the passion flower. The Krishna Kamal. The Kaurav-Pandav Phool, as the mali had explained to her, insisting that the deep purple outer calyx numbered a hundred petals in all. The Kauravas. Then came the five greenish-white Pandavas, cherishing in their midst the single, graceful green stamen, Draupadi.
Nivedita had ever since been fascinated by that flower. Good, Evil, Beauty. All in one. All fused together to form a complete whole. After all, good without a touch of evil is insipid; evil without any good at all, intolerable; and as for beauty - beauty is its own justification, in a way that poor virtue alone can never be!
As always during the monsoon, the Krishna Kamal creeper bloomed in profusion, throwing out new shoots almost every other day. A lot of them had got entangled with a tall thorny cactus growing wild, close by. Nivedita tried to disentangle the tendrils of the Krishna Kamal from the cactus, getting badly scratched in the process. At last she gave up. Let the creeper remain entangled! The tender, pliant tendrils were clinging too tightly to the thorns of the cactus. Sighing in exasperation, she- turned her attention to the rock garden.
* * * *
While Nivedita had been busy on the terrace, Dina's luncheon guests had arrived almost en masse. Over lunch, Dina assumed a brittle gaiety which her guests pretended to accept at face value. Prakash was clearly ill at ease. It was a strange, strained luncheon party.
"Deadly undercurrents," murmured Zerxes Avari in Scherezade's ear. "One pinprick, and all hell will break loose!"
Banoo Maa's smiles were even gayer and more determined than Dina's. But all the while her heart bled for her.
Fredun gulped down his lunch as one anxious to complete a distasteful job as soon as possible and get it over and done with. Rashna was composed and distant. Firdauz had excused himself. "Some impossible-to-break prior engagement," Rashna had politely explained on his behalf.
The usual birthday greetings were conveyed, presents given, and Fredun wondered how soon he and Rashna could take their leave without seeming rude. Sherrie, he knew, would leave with Zerxes.
Fredun had accepted his daughter's relationship with the brilliant thirty-two-year old lawyer, as he had always accepted anything his daughter had ever done. Without disapproval and without understanding.
Shirin was even more effusive than usual, her sharp acquisitive eyes darting over the curios and the crystal in the fabulously furnished apartment. Prakash had really minted in the last few years! And of course, he had become a bit of a 'big noise' in the city. His name was quite often in the papers. And the tabloids mentioned 'what he read,' 'where he ate,' etc. . . etc. . . etc. . ., thought Shirin, who had her own perception of fame. Her own husband was his usual retiring self, unobtrusively controlling his wife if he thought she went too far. And Tehmul was only interested in his lunch.
Zerxes had been looking rather narrowly at Dina. She had embraced him when he and Scherezade had entered, "now that he was almost one of the family," and Zerxes' fastidious nostrils had wrinkled at the strong aroma of 'Joy' that emanated from her. She appeared to have been drinking rather heavily before they had got there! Her gait was a shade unsteady and her colour a bit too high. Possibly the lashings of perfume were meant to drown the smell of liquor, he thought cynically. He had few illusions about his Scherezade's Dina Fui.
And even fewer about the man she had supposedly married.
He wondered if Prakash Sattar, as he now called himself, realized the legal consequences of his actions. After all, he did have two children of his own, no matter how strained their relations!
"So, how are you two celebrating this evening?" Shirin's slightly shrill voice broke in upon Zerxes' thoughts. She was smiling brightly at Dina and Prakash, oblivious of Dina's frown and Prakash's indifferent shrug. Dina was forced to break the awkward silence, ultimately. They had just about finished lunch, and the dessert, orange souffle, had been served.
"Prakash has to go to Poona for work," she said shortly.
"Oh! But surely he won't be leaving today itself?" gasped Shirin, putting her other foot into her mouth. "Jamshed would never dream of leaving me alone on my birthday, would you, darling?"
"Dina's a more independent woman than you, my dear," was her spouse's diplomatic response, dodging her question and drawing a chuckle from Fredun, who was gulping down his souffle.
"I really have no choice, but to leave this evening," said Prakash irritably. He gave a short laugh. "As Jamshed seems to appreciate, Dina and I don't live in each other's pockets, you know!"
"You really must give me the recipe for this orange souffle, Dina" intervened Banoo Maa serenely, ignoring the earlier exchanges, turning the conversation into safer, more general channels.
Scherezade chipped in with a recipe for a really sinful chocolate souffle.
As even the culinary discussion seemed to be in danger of petering out, Fredun, seeing that everybody had finished dessert, judged it was time to leave, and rose, nodding at his wife. That seemed to be the signal for general dispersal. Dina did not rise to see her guests off. She seemed both tired and off colour.
The morning's downpour had settled into a steady drizzle, as Dina's guests left. Scherezade, getting into the car with Zerxes, had expressed a desire to drive down to Aksha beach. Zerxes had agreed almost absently. He seemed rather preoccupied during most of the long drive, responding to Scherezade in monosyllables.
As they turned off on to the highway, he suddenly asked, "What's bugging your brother Firdauz? Why didn't he turn up?"
"Because he's a pompous ass," Scherezade replied, scorn for her brother vibrating in her normally musical voice. "He's been even more snooty about this conversion business than Dad himself. And God knows, he's been snooty enough!"
"Snooty? In what way?" queried Zerxes, at last succeeding in overtaking a road-hogging, exhaust-emitting truck just ahead of them.
Scherezade answered slowly, choosing her words with care, "Dad adored Dina Fui. Especially when they were small. Even afterwards, when I was a child, I remember she and Khurshed Fua were always in and out of our house. Hanoz came along much later. Dina Fui often dropped in alone without Khurshed Fua. I think at times Mom used to get quite fed up of her." Scherezade wrinkled her brow in the recollection of those far-off memories. "Dad is her younger brother, you know! He actually used to hang on her words -'- her opinions, her advice."
"Both of which no doubt she gave quite freely," cut in Zerxes.
The note of satire in his tone was evident. Scherezade wrinkled her brow again. "Umm . . . come to think of it, perhaps she did!" she admitted reluctantly. "But she always meant it for the best," she added defensively.
"They all do," Zerxes murmured sarcastically. The car bumped over a pothole he couldn't avoid. "But go on . . . you were saying, your father respected his sister's advice. And your mother resented it."
"I did not say that!" flashed Scherezade, turning round in her seat and glaring at him. "Stop twisting my words!"
"Okay, okay," he gave a lazy grin, glancing at her amusedly through green eyes gleaming behind half-closed lids, his left hand flung up from the steering wheel in a gesture half of surrender, half of conciliation. The hand found its way to her delicate nape beneath the swathe of heavy brown hair and caressed it. "Don't take on so, my Baby! You're feeling guilty because you think your loyalties are divided. But you needn't! You can love both, your parents and your aunt, you know," he said softly, adding bracingly, "and you can tolerate both their points of view without yourself accepting either."
"I suppose you're right," Scherezade murmured, sinking her chin into her cupped hands, elbows resting on bunched-up knees. "But tell me," she urged, her voice quickening, her quicksilver mind darting back to something he had said earlier. "Why did you say Dina Fui didn't seem 'quite normal' to you?" .
By now they had reached the turn-off on the highway, leading to INS Hamla. Zerxes negotiated the bend, murmuring as he did so, "Well, she's either been drinking too much, or she's taken a particularly heavy dose of sedatives, or she's on drugs." "You must be joking." Scherezade stiffened.
Zerxes did not comment on that. Which was comment enough, for Scherezade.
Her face suddenly clouded. Hesitantly, almost tentatively, she asked in a small voice, "Do you honestly think she's on drugs?"
"Could be," he answered briefly, casting a shrewd, sideways glance at her exquisite profile, with its chiselled cheekbones, and the lovely, lovely line of the jaw. A study in uncertainty.
"But why? Why is she changed so?" She whispered almost to herself.
"Do you really need me to answer that question?" was the amused query.
"I suppose it's this damned conversion business. But tell me, would it have bothered you, so much?"
"The question really doesn't apply. Either to you or to me. Because we don't give a damn for 'what people say'. But your Dina Fui obviously does! That being the case, taking the refuge of secularity, she changed her religion to give a semblance of respectability to an otherwise invalid marriage."
She knit her brow. "Are you saying that her marriage to Prakash is invalid?"
"Let's say, of doubtful validity," he temporized. "In the opinion of quite a few eminent jurists and legal experts, if the only reason for conversion is to avail of the benefit of a second wife without otherwise believing in and following the tenets of Islam, both the conversion and consequently the second marriage would be invalid. But that's a gray area still. The legal position on this aspect is not quite clear cut. Nor will it be, unless in some such case the first wife initiates bigamy proceedings against the husband and the so-called 'second wife'."
"I'm sure Dina Fui still considers herself very much a Parsee, Zerx." She looked so troubled that Zerxes overlooked the corruption of his name. His left hand left the wheel again and clasped both her small ones, agitatedly worrying each other on her lap.
"Stop thinking about it, darling," he told her gently. "Whatever it is, now Dina has to live with it. She was no child when she took that decision. She knew well it would be irrevocable. I shouldn't worry too much about it." But he himself was worried. Worried about the mental and physical condition of his Scherezade's favourite aunt. And the state of her doomed 'marriage'.
"This is what happens," he thought to himself savagely, "when people rush into things without bothering to examine the possible ramifications, the consequences. On themselves, on their families!"
"You don't think she'll do something drastic, do you?" Scherezade asked suddenly, her implication clear in her tone.
"Now, Sherrie," he mimicked, deliberately malicious. "Have we come on this drive to talk about your wretched aunt and her problems?" By now, the concrete structures on either side of the road had given way to the lush greenery that signalled the proximity of the beach they both loved. Scherezade shook her head, brightening perceptibly at the changed scenery. She shook back her hair and gave him a mischievous, sidelong glance. "1 have better things in mind!" ''I'm relieved to hear that," he returned a trifle dryly, bringing the car to a halt outside the Motel Blue Ballerina and giving her a bruising kiss before getting out of the car, opening her door, and dragging her out with an ungentle hand. Then he slid his arm round her waist and led her out onto the sands and the surf.
* * * *
While Zerxes and Scherezade were strolling on the beach, inter alia, getting thoroughly drenched in the process, Shirin was regaling her spouse with hot bhajiyas, freshly made; hot coffee, freshly ground; and hot gossip, most of it made up.
Jamshed, who hadn't been able to go through the Sunday papers at his leisure that morning, had piled them up on a low cane stool next to his easy chair and was glancing through them one by one, his legs comfortably propped up on the sliding arm of the easy-chair. Six Sunday papers was the one extravagance he indulged in, to the volubly expressed perplexity of his wife. He grunted from time to time when Shirin paused for breath, his eyes on the paper.
Shirin ultimately, inevitably, came round to the subject of her younger sister. "Poor thing's been more sinned against than having sinned, that's what I've always said and that's what I say," she said, nodding defiantly to an imagined audience. The spoon rattled in her cup as she stirred the sugar vigorously.
"Seduced by that man, that's what she was. Pregnant, no doubt," she went on, as is usual with most gossips, hitting the nail on the head without realizing it.
This was too much for her husband to ignore. "My dear," he protested mildly from behind the shield of the paper, "If that were really the case, what's happened to the baby?"
"Dead," pronounced his ever-fertile wife with ghoulish relish. "Must have miscarried it," she added as a clincher.
Jamshed slowly lowered the paper and looked at his wife thoughtfully. The reasoning advanced by her now seemed rather obvious, in the circumstances surrounding his sister-in-law's second marriage. And in his experience, the obvious, the predictable, was often the truth. That was what made his wife such a very dangerous woman!
* * * *
A few kilometres away from the Dumasias' home, Rashna Vatcha entered a pretty old building in the tree-lined Laburnum road and trudged up the two steep stories to her flat, struggling with the heavy bags in both her hands. She stopped outside their flat door, panting for breath, put down one of the bags, and fumbled in her handbag for the latch-key. There was always such a lot of rubbish in her bag! She really must clean it out sometime soon, she told herself yet again. The drizzle had progressed to a steady shower. She was dripping water from her rain-proof skirt and wind-cheater onto the doormat while she hunted for her key.
Opening the door at last and entering the passage that led to the living room, she found her husband dressed and apparently on his way out. Surprised, she asked him if he was going somewhere. He hadn't said a word to her earlier about going out anywhere!
Fredun looked a little uncomfortable. He mumbled indistinctly, "Er . . . yes. Something's come up. Have to go out for a while", edging past her towards the door.
"Something at work?" Rashna asked sceptically.
"No. . . not really," snapped Fredun, irritated by the questions. "One of my friends. He's got a slight problem. Will be back soon, darling." He hurriedly opened the door and stepped out.
* * * *
The shower had progressed into a relentless deluge. Nivedita watched the sheets of rain lashing her pots on the terrace. The roses were flooded. But she no longer cared. No longer cared about mixing sand. About ensuring drainage. But the roses still bloomed. And if their roots had started putrefying, that was not as yet apparent in the plants above the soil.
She took out the handkerchief from her pocket - her handkerchief! Disregarding the pouring rain, she went out to the rock garden, lifted a few rocks, and pulled out the figurine. The new figurine that she had specially got. Today was the day, she told herself with certainty. The time had come! She took the figurine and the handkerchief to her room and locked the door. This was going to be the one secret she would not share even with Vinod!
She got to work.
The time was right.
Dusk had fallen.
* * * *
While Nivedita was thus engrossed, a rather shabby looking man was arguing with the newly appointed watchman on duty in Dina's building, demanding to be allowed to go up to the Sattars' flat. The watchman looked at the stranger dubiously, reluctant to phone Dina on the intercom, knowing that she was alone except for her maid. Sattar sahib had left to go out of town, a short while ago. Ultimately giving in to the man's insistence, he buzzed Dina's flat on the intercom.
"A man here wants to come up to your flat, ma'am. Says you've called him with regard to some problem with the television," said the watchman, his respectful tone barely disguising his disbelief. He listened for a moment and then nodded to the man. "All right," he said brusquely. "Go."
Dina answered the doorbell herself. She had just sent Fatima out on a long errand. Fatima had left by the servants' lift. Now that Sattar Madam had vouched for the chap, the watchman didn't dare to insist that he use the servants' lift.
Dina opened the door and let the man in. Then she closed the door and faced him resolutely.
*
On June 26, her birthday, Dina awoke to the alarum of a deafening clap of thunder, and was astonished to find that it was already past 9.
The monsoon that year was even more erratic than usual. Days of bright sunshine would be followed by a sudden deluge, which would last a day or two.
June 26, 1994 was a wet, gloomy day. All signs of the sun had been successfully obscured by the heavy downpour that roared furiously from a gray sky. Noisy gusts of rain-laden wind blew into Dina's bedroom, causing the lace curtains to writhe in wild frenzy, and made the connecting door between her bedroom and Prakash's rattle.
The persistent knocking ultimately made Dina realize that it was Prakash, and not the wind, rattling the connecting door. Prakash was awaiting her permission to enter.
Pulling the bedclothes more securely around her, she bade him enter.
"Happy Birthday," he said, sitting down on the edge of the bed, giving her cheek a hurried peck and thrusting a package into her hand at the same time. "I hope you like it. It's. . . er perfume again," he said almost apologetically, thinking of the bottle of 'L' Air Du Temps' his secretary had got last year, when he had asked her to go and get a bottle of perfume for his wife. The light, summery scent was about the most unsuitable for Dina's personality! But there had been no help for it.
This year he had played safe. Asked his peon to go and get a large bottle of 'Joy'. The gift-wrapping had been done by the secretary. For the last couple of years, his imagination had been unable to go beyond a bottle of perfume when it came to choosing gifts for his wife.
Dina's lips curved into the semblance of a smile. She had no illusions about the amount of time and thought expended by Prakash in choosing her birthday present.
"That's all right," she said in reply to his sheepish semi-apology, her eyes on the silver-wrapped package he had pressed into her hand. Looking up at him she said quietly, "It's the thought that counts."
For some reason, that remark annoyed him and added to his sense of guilt where she was concerned. For a brief moment, he fantasized Sonali sitting on the bed where Dina sat: her long hair rippling down her shoulders, her liquid eyes smouldering with a fire Dina had never known. With something of a shock, it suddenly struck him that he and Dina had never been able to sexually climax with each other. Whereas with Sonali . . .
. . . "Prakash, don't," she had giggled, the first time he had undressed her.
Her 'Don't' was an invitation. She never said 'Do!' Her husky voice was an allure in itself. . . unlike Dina's clipped, often sarcastic tones. And as for her body . . . not that Dina was bad, but Sonali was lush . . . voluptuous! And she knew how to drown a man in the honey of her tongue as well as the treacle of her lips . . . she was soft, seemingly subservient; while Dina was almost aggressive, putting him on the defensive where his own sexuality was concerned.
Dina threatened his maleness; Sonali flattered it. He remembered those clandestine hours stolen from his work, at her clinic . . . on her couch. . . on the patient bed. . . ultimately, on the floor, to give full rein to Sonali's expertise. . . she was like a Khajuraho statue come to life, thought the besotted Prakash, after Sonali had initiated him into yet another way of making love . . . he had no idea it could be such fun in the standing position, with his back against the wall, one leg straddling her soft, yielding hips, the other supporting her rounded thigh, her long fingers guiding him expertly, unerringly, while she gyrated rythmically against him, as agile as a belly-dancer . . .
He got off her bed. Dina's bed. "I'll go and shower, then we'll have a quiet breakfast before your family descends upon us." Now he hadn't meant to say that about her family. But it had slipped out. Shrugging with mental resignation at the hopelessness of it all, he went back to his own room.
Dina slowly untied the gold thread, unwrapped the silver wrapping paper and opened the bottle of perfume after he had left. 'Joy'! At least he had chosen the right perfume this time, she mused wryly.
It had gone wrong. It had all gone wrong with Prakash too, almost since the Nikah. They had been lovers before, but then their relationship had had a different flavour altogether! Prakash was one of those men for whom the chase is more thrilling than the conquest. Shortly after marriage had ended the reason for that marriage. And as Dina became more and more aggressive, both in bed and out of it, Prakash, with purely chauvinistic notions about women,
was repulsed by her almost to a stage where he couldn't perform. And he began to blame Dina, hate her, for that. Adding to Dina's bitterness.And exacerbating her feelings of guilt.
The breakfast a deux brought to Prakash's mind hazily, the words of an almost forgotten Neil Diamond song. Something about a man and a woman and no words between them. No conversation. That was the situation between him and Dina, now. No conversation. Just resentful silences on her part, a rising, resolutely curbed frustration on his. Relieved only by the moments snatched with Sonali. And the time spent with.. .
The telephone bell shrilled, breaking into his thoughts. It was for Dina, said Fatima. Dina rose from the breakfast table and passed through the bead-curtained door into the drawing room to take it. She looked slightly flustered when she returned. Prakash looked at her narrowly. He had a shrewd suspicion of who had been on the line. Well, he did not care! Not any longer. He did not have much time left for caring, one way or another. Soon all this would end, he told himself almost thankfully, his mind going back to what the Doctor had told him. Subsequently confirmed by a tearful Sonali.
The doorbell rang. Fatima woodenly announced that a lady called Nivedita Shahane had come to see Dina Memsahib.
Casting a glance at Dina's set face, Prakash told Fatima, "Ask her to wait in the Hall. The Memsahib will be with her shortly." He then steeled himself to meet Dina's eyes.
"You knew she was coming." It was a statement. Dina managed to turn it into an accusation as well.
"She is keen to build bridges now. She thought the best way to start would be to come and wish you on your birthday." His words sounded hollow even to himself. His tone betrayed the struggle to remain casual.
"When did she tell you this?"
"She telephoned me earlier, while you were asleep."
Dina looked at him steadily. "You hadn't gone out of town for work." Again, it was a statement. And the accusation even more evident.
He drained his coffee and rose. "! don't wish to have any arguments with you today. You may think what you choose. But Nivedita's in a slightly sensitive frame of mind right now. At least try and pretend to return her sentiments." There, now that's tom it, he told himself wryly. Might as well have admitted where he'd been, the last couple of days!
He had to pass the Hall, (he had persistently resisted all Dina's efforts to get him to call it 'drawing room'), to get to his room. Both the bedrooms, his and Dina's, opened out into the Hall, apart from being internally connected with each other. On the other side of the flat, the bedrooms opened out onto the balcony which also led directly to the small lobby which was the main entrance, often used by Dina as a get-away, if Prakash was entertaining some of his business cronies in the the Hall. The Hall was designed as a central focus, opening out into two of the four bedrooms, the dining room, and the lobby leading to the entrance.
Nivedita was hovering near the door of Dina's bedroom, rummaging in her handbag for something. At his "Hallo," she started violently and looked up almost guiltily. "The child's nerves are shot to pieces," thought Prakash to himself worriedly. "I wonder if she realizes what she is getting into, wanting to meet Dina in this frame of mind!"
"Do you want me to be here when you meet her?" he asked his daughter gently.
"N..no," she stammered somewhat breathlessly. "I think it's better if I do it on my own."
Prakash went back to his room and started packing. He had to leave for Poona in the evening. Hence the lunch party with her family, instead of the more convenient dinner. As it was a Sunday, that had been possible.
Jamshed had retired a year ago as the Headmaster of a reputed boys' school; his wife had never worked in her life; their son Tehmul worked in a Bank; Fredun worked for a fairly reputed private limited company as the General Manager (Finance); no school for Rashna, who was a teacher in a girls' school. Scherezade was a trainee copywriter in one of the larger, more reputed ad agencies, having joined just about a couple of months ago. Zerxes was a rapidly rising criminal lawyer, acquiring a formidable reputation for cross-examination. Both he and Scherezade often worked on Sundays for a few hours, mostly at Zerxes' home, in his study. But they'd agreed to make an exception on Dina's birthday.
Dina was determined to preserve appearances in front of her family members. They mustn't know that this marriage too had failed. Else she'd never live it down, she thought to herself, blanching at the thought of the malicious "I told you so's" that she was sure would ensue.
By around noon, Dina had still not come out of her room. Prakash knocked on her door. "What time are your people coming?" he shouted through the closed door.
"Around one o'clock," replied Dina, coming out of the bedroom, fully dressed. She led the way to the drawing room.
"Er.. how did the meeting with Nivedita go?" asked Prakash hesitantly.
"It didn't," was the cryptic reply.
"Meaning?" asked Prakash puzzled, a hint of foreboding stealing into him.
"Meaning that she appeared to have changed her mind about wanting to 'build bridges', and had disappeared by the time I left the dining room and went out into the Drawing Room," responded Dina acidly.
"Poor child, her nerve must have failed her at the last moment," murmured Prakash.
"Possibly," answered Dina in a tone indicating clearly that she wished to have no further discussion on the subject.
* * * *
Nivedita had rushed home and wandered out onto her sanctum, the terrace. She glared in vexation at the passion flower. The Krishna Kamal. The Kaurav-Pandav Phool, as the mali had explained to her, insisting that the deep purple outer calyx numbered a hundred petals in all. The Kauravas. Then came the five greenish-white Pandavas, cherishing in their midst the single, graceful green stamen, Draupadi.
Nivedita had ever since been fascinated by that flower. Good, Evil, Beauty. All in one. All fused together to form a complete whole. After all, good without a touch of evil is insipid; evil without any good at all, intolerable; and as for beauty - beauty is its own justification, in a way that poor virtue alone can never be!
As always during the monsoon, the Krishna Kamal creeper bloomed in profusion, throwing out new shoots almost every other day. A lot of them had got entangled with a tall thorny cactus growing wild, close by. Nivedita tried to disentangle the tendrils of the Krishna Kamal from the cactus, getting badly scratched in the process. At last she gave up. Let the creeper remain entangled! The tender, pliant tendrils were clinging too tightly to the thorns of the cactus. Sighing in exasperation, she- turned her attention to the rock garden.
* * * *
While Nivedita had been busy on the terrace, Dina's luncheon guests had arrived almost en masse. Over lunch, Dina assumed a brittle gaiety which her guests pretended to accept at face value. Prakash was clearly ill at ease. It was a strange, strained luncheon party.
"Deadly undercurrents," murmured Zerxes Avari in Scherezade's ear. "One pinprick, and all hell will break loose!"
Banoo Maa's smiles were even gayer and more determined than Dina's. But all the while her heart bled for her.
Fredun gulped down his lunch as one anxious to complete a distasteful job as soon as possible and get it over and done with. Rashna was composed and distant. Firdauz had excused himself. "Some impossible-to-break prior engagement," Rashna had politely explained on his behalf.
The usual birthday greetings were conveyed, presents given, and Fredun wondered how soon he and Rashna could take their leave without seeming rude. Sherrie, he knew, would leave with Zerxes.
Fredun had accepted his daughter's relationship with the brilliant thirty-two-year old lawyer, as he had always accepted anything his daughter had ever done. Without disapproval and without understanding.
Shirin was even more effusive than usual, her sharp acquisitive eyes darting over the curios and the crystal in the fabulously furnished apartment. Prakash had really minted in the last few years! And of course, he had become a bit of a 'big noise' in the city. His name was quite often in the papers. And the tabloids mentioned 'what he read,' 'where he ate,' etc. . . etc. . . etc. . ., thought Shirin, who had her own perception of fame. Her own husband was his usual retiring self, unobtrusively controlling his wife if he thought she went too far. And Tehmul was only interested in his lunch.
Zerxes had been looking rather narrowly at Dina. She had embraced him when he and Scherezade had entered, "now that he was almost one of the family," and Zerxes' fastidious nostrils had wrinkled at the strong aroma of 'Joy' that emanated from her. She appeared to have been drinking rather heavily before they had got there! Her gait was a shade unsteady and her colour a bit too high. Possibly the lashings of perfume were meant to drown the smell of liquor, he thought cynically. He had few illusions about his Scherezade's Dina Fui.
And even fewer about the man she had supposedly married.
He wondered if Prakash Sattar, as he now called himself, realized the legal consequences of his actions. After all, he did have two children of his own, no matter how strained their relations!
"So, how are you two celebrating this evening?" Shirin's slightly shrill voice broke in upon Zerxes' thoughts. She was smiling brightly at Dina and Prakash, oblivious of Dina's frown and Prakash's indifferent shrug. Dina was forced to break the awkward silence, ultimately. They had just about finished lunch, and the dessert, orange souffle, had been served.
"Prakash has to go to Poona for work," she said shortly.
"Oh! But surely he won't be leaving today itself?" gasped Shirin, putting her other foot into her mouth. "Jamshed would never dream of leaving me alone on my birthday, would you, darling?"
"Dina's a more independent woman than you, my dear," was her spouse's diplomatic response, dodging her question and drawing a chuckle from Fredun, who was gulping down his souffle.
"I really have no choice, but to leave this evening," said Prakash irritably. He gave a short laugh. "As Jamshed seems to appreciate, Dina and I don't live in each other's pockets, you know!"
"You really must give me the recipe for this orange souffle, Dina" intervened Banoo Maa serenely, ignoring the earlier exchanges, turning the conversation into safer, more general channels.
Scherezade chipped in with a recipe for a really sinful chocolate souffle.
As even the culinary discussion seemed to be in danger of petering out, Fredun, seeing that everybody had finished dessert, judged it was time to leave, and rose, nodding at his wife. That seemed to be the signal for general dispersal. Dina did not rise to see her guests off. She seemed both tired and off colour.
The morning's downpour had settled into a steady drizzle, as Dina's guests left. Scherezade, getting into the car with Zerxes, had expressed a desire to drive down to Aksha beach. Zerxes had agreed almost absently. He seemed rather preoccupied during most of the long drive, responding to Scherezade in monosyllables.
As they turned off on to the highway, he suddenly asked, "What's bugging your brother Firdauz? Why didn't he turn up?"
"Because he's a pompous ass," Scherezade replied, scorn for her brother vibrating in her normally musical voice. "He's been even more snooty about this conversion business than Dad himself. And God knows, he's been snooty enough!"
"Snooty? In what way?" queried Zerxes, at last succeeding in overtaking a road-hogging, exhaust-emitting truck just ahead of them.
Scherezade answered slowly, choosing her words with care, "Dad adored Dina Fui. Especially when they were small. Even afterwards, when I was a child, I remember she and Khurshed Fua were always in and out of our house. Hanoz came along much later. Dina Fui often dropped in alone without Khurshed Fua. I think at times Mom used to get quite fed up of her." Scherezade wrinkled her brow in the recollection of those far-off memories. "Dad is her younger brother, you know! He actually used to hang on her words -'- her opinions, her advice."
"Both of which no doubt she gave quite freely," cut in Zerxes.
The note of satire in his tone was evident. Scherezade wrinkled her brow again. "Umm . . . come to think of it, perhaps she did!" she admitted reluctantly. "But she always meant it for the best," she added defensively.
"They all do," Zerxes murmured sarcastically. The car bumped over a pothole he couldn't avoid. "But go on . . . you were saying, your father respected his sister's advice. And your mother resented it."
"I did not say that!" flashed Scherezade, turning round in her seat and glaring at him. "Stop twisting my words!"
"Okay, okay," he gave a lazy grin, glancing at her amusedly through green eyes gleaming behind half-closed lids, his left hand flung up from the steering wheel in a gesture half of surrender, half of conciliation. The hand found its way to her delicate nape beneath the swathe of heavy brown hair and caressed it. "Don't take on so, my Baby! You're feeling guilty because you think your loyalties are divided. But you needn't! You can love both, your parents and your aunt, you know," he said softly, adding bracingly, "and you can tolerate both their points of view without yourself accepting either."
"I suppose you're right," Scherezade murmured, sinking her chin into her cupped hands, elbows resting on bunched-up knees. "But tell me," she urged, her voice quickening, her quicksilver mind darting back to something he had said earlier. "Why did you say Dina Fui didn't seem 'quite normal' to you?" .
By now they had reached the turn-off on the highway, leading to INS Hamla. Zerxes negotiated the bend, murmuring as he did so, "Well, she's either been drinking too much, or she's taken a particularly heavy dose of sedatives, or she's on drugs." "You must be joking." Scherezade stiffened.
Zerxes did not comment on that. Which was comment enough, for Scherezade.
Her face suddenly clouded. Hesitantly, almost tentatively, she asked in a small voice, "Do you honestly think she's on drugs?"
"Could be," he answered briefly, casting a shrewd, sideways glance at her exquisite profile, with its chiselled cheekbones, and the lovely, lovely line of the jaw. A study in uncertainty.
"But why? Why is she changed so?" She whispered almost to herself.
"Do you really need me to answer that question?" was the amused query.
"I suppose it's this damned conversion business. But tell me, would it have bothered you, so much?"
"The question really doesn't apply. Either to you or to me. Because we don't give a damn for 'what people say'. But your Dina Fui obviously does! That being the case, taking the refuge of secularity, she changed her religion to give a semblance of respectability to an otherwise invalid marriage."
She knit her brow. "Are you saying that her marriage to Prakash is invalid?"
"Let's say, of doubtful validity," he temporized. "In the opinion of quite a few eminent jurists and legal experts, if the only reason for conversion is to avail of the benefit of a second wife without otherwise believing in and following the tenets of Islam, both the conversion and consequently the second marriage would be invalid. But that's a gray area still. The legal position on this aspect is not quite clear cut. Nor will it be, unless in some such case the first wife initiates bigamy proceedings against the husband and the so-called 'second wife'."
"I'm sure Dina Fui still considers herself very much a Parsee, Zerx." She looked so troubled that Zerxes overlooked the corruption of his name. His left hand left the wheel again and clasped both her small ones, agitatedly worrying each other on her lap.
"Stop thinking about it, darling," he told her gently. "Whatever it is, now Dina has to live with it. She was no child when she took that decision. She knew well it would be irrevocable. I shouldn't worry too much about it." But he himself was worried. Worried about the mental and physical condition of his Scherezade's favourite aunt. And the state of her doomed 'marriage'.
"This is what happens," he thought to himself savagely, "when people rush into things without bothering to examine the possible ramifications, the consequences. On themselves, on their families!"
"You don't think she'll do something drastic, do you?" Scherezade asked suddenly, her implication clear in her tone.
"Now, Sherrie," he mimicked, deliberately malicious. "Have we come on this drive to talk about your wretched aunt and her problems?" By now, the concrete structures on either side of the road had given way to the lush greenery that signalled the proximity of the beach they both loved. Scherezade shook her head, brightening perceptibly at the changed scenery. She shook back her hair and gave him a mischievous, sidelong glance. "1 have better things in mind!" ''I'm relieved to hear that," he returned a trifle dryly, bringing the car to a halt outside the Motel Blue Ballerina and giving her a bruising kiss before getting out of the car, opening her door, and dragging her out with an ungentle hand. Then he slid his arm round her waist and led her out onto the sands and the surf.
* * * *
While Zerxes and Scherezade were strolling on the beach, inter alia, getting thoroughly drenched in the process, Shirin was regaling her spouse with hot bhajiyas, freshly made; hot coffee, freshly ground; and hot gossip, most of it made up.
Jamshed, who hadn't been able to go through the Sunday papers at his leisure that morning, had piled them up on a low cane stool next to his easy chair and was glancing through them one by one, his legs comfortably propped up on the sliding arm of the easy-chair. Six Sunday papers was the one extravagance he indulged in, to the volubly expressed perplexity of his wife. He grunted from time to time when Shirin paused for breath, his eyes on the paper.
Shirin ultimately, inevitably, came round to the subject of her younger sister. "Poor thing's been more sinned against than having sinned, that's what I've always said and that's what I say," she said, nodding defiantly to an imagined audience. The spoon rattled in her cup as she stirred the sugar vigorously.
"Seduced by that man, that's what she was. Pregnant, no doubt," she went on, as is usual with most gossips, hitting the nail on the head without realizing it.
This was too much for her husband to ignore. "My dear," he protested mildly from behind the shield of the paper, "If that were really the case, what's happened to the baby?"
"Dead," pronounced his ever-fertile wife with ghoulish relish. "Must have miscarried it," she added as a clincher.
Jamshed slowly lowered the paper and looked at his wife thoughtfully. The reasoning advanced by her now seemed rather obvious, in the circumstances surrounding his sister-in-law's second marriage. And in his experience, the obvious, the predictable, was often the truth. That was what made his wife such a very dangerous woman!
* * * *
A few kilometres away from the Dumasias' home, Rashna Vatcha entered a pretty old building in the tree-lined Laburnum road and trudged up the two steep stories to her flat, struggling with the heavy bags in both her hands. She stopped outside their flat door, panting for breath, put down one of the bags, and fumbled in her handbag for the latch-key. There was always such a lot of rubbish in her bag! She really must clean it out sometime soon, she told herself yet again. The drizzle had progressed to a steady shower. She was dripping water from her rain-proof skirt and wind-cheater onto the doormat while she hunted for her key.
Opening the door at last and entering the passage that led to the living room, she found her husband dressed and apparently on his way out. Surprised, she asked him if he was going somewhere. He hadn't said a word to her earlier about going out anywhere!
Fredun looked a little uncomfortable. He mumbled indistinctly, "Er . . . yes. Something's come up. Have to go out for a while", edging past her towards the door.
"Something at work?" Rashna asked sceptically.
"No. . . not really," snapped Fredun, irritated by the questions. "One of my friends. He's got a slight problem. Will be back soon, darling." He hurriedly opened the door and stepped out.
* * * *
The shower had progressed into a relentless deluge. Nivedita watched the sheets of rain lashing her pots on the terrace. The roses were flooded. But she no longer cared. No longer cared about mixing sand. About ensuring drainage. But the roses still bloomed. And if their roots had started putrefying, that was not as yet apparent in the plants above the soil.
She took out the handkerchief from her pocket - her handkerchief! Disregarding the pouring rain, she went out to the rock garden, lifted a few rocks, and pulled out the figurine. The new figurine that she had specially got. Today was the day, she told herself with certainty. The time had come! She took the figurine and the handkerchief to her room and locked the door. This was going to be the one secret she would not share even with Vinod!
She got to work.
The time was right.
Dusk had fallen.
* * * *
While Nivedita was thus engrossed, a rather shabby looking man was arguing with the newly appointed watchman on duty in Dina's building, demanding to be allowed to go up to the Sattars' flat. The watchman looked at the stranger dubiously, reluctant to phone Dina on the intercom, knowing that she was alone except for her maid. Sattar sahib had left to go out of town, a short while ago. Ultimately giving in to the man's insistence, he buzzed Dina's flat on the intercom.
"A man here wants to come up to your flat, ma'am. Says you've called him with regard to some problem with the television," said the watchman, his respectful tone barely disguising his disbelief. He listened for a moment and then nodded to the man. "All right," he said brusquely. "Go."
Dina answered the doorbell herself. She had just sent Fatima out on a long errand. Fatima had left by the servants' lift. Now that Sattar Madam had vouched for the chap, the watchman didn't dare to insist that he use the servants' lift.
Dina opened the door and let the man in. Then she closed the door and faced him resolutely.
*
The Turning - Chapter Five
CHAPTER FIVE
Prakash shook out his kurta-pajamas out of the overnighter, trying to reorient himself with his surroundings.
Back in these walls after a gap of ten years! So far, his daughter had hardly spoken to him. His mother who had come down from Baroda had been resting in the room allotted to her. She was as yet unaware of his presence in the house. He wondered how she would greet him now, after all these years. Ten years ago, she had vowed that he was no longer any son of hers.
Dina, of course, would play merry hell if she got to know! But that was a remote possibility he had been impelled to risk. He had had to come here, for Karuna's twelfth day ceremonies. He just had to! He'd stay here overnight, sharing Vinod's room, and leave the next evening.
It was just a matter of a day and a half, really!
Prakash glanced at his watch. Almost 5 in the evening. Arun and 5uchitra had been closeted in their room, after greeting Prakash briefly. But thank God they, at least, did not display any animosity towards him! Arun was a sophisticated, highly educated man. Prakash hardly knew Suchitra, but she seemed sensible enough. He sighed, trying to shrug off past ghosts. Vinod should be in shortly.
Here he was! Prakash smiled slightly at him and went on unpacking his overnighter, while Vinod prowled around, making desultory conversation. Vinod had cleared some space for him on the small bedside table, so Prakash could keep some of his stuff there shaving cream, after-shave cream, cologne, a silver-wrapped package tied with gold thread, tooth brush and paste, razor, bottles and strips of capsules . . .
He laid out a pair of clothes on the back of a chair, unwrapped his bedroom slippers, then took Vinod by the arm, led him to the bed and sat down with him. "Now, Vinod, tell me. . ." began Prakash.
* * * *
While her fatehr and Vinod had been conversing, Nivedita was crying her heart out in her grandmother's lap.
"There there child, don't take on so," crooned Kuntabai, stroking the long black hair spread out on her white saree'd lap.
The sobbing ended in a series of shudders. The stream iof tears dried up a tlast. Nivedita raised a white, red-eyed face, her thick hair billowing out like a storm cloud pregnant with rain, and gazed blindly ahead of her.
Just as Kuntabai was beginning to feel a bit uneasy about that fixed unfocused stare, Nivedita pronounced, "Now I know what I have to do. I shall do it! I have to do it!" in a queer calm tone, as though repeating a lesson learnt by rote. Then she ran out of the room before her startled grandmother could react, and rushed straight like a homing pigeon into her brother's room.
There was nobody there. But even in that empty room, Nivedita could feel her father's presence almost tangibly. . . in the clothes piled up on a chair. . . in the toiletries lying on Vinod's dressing table. . . in the shining silver package, indecently opulent in this house of mourning.
Nivedita crept closer to the package and read the message on the card stuck on to it. She felt an almost physical shock of anger, mingled with pain. "And my mother's ashes not yet immersed," she thought to erself resentfully, turning and walking blindly out of Vinod's room. She blundered into her grandmother who had come into the living room, and rushed past her without a word to the main door, and out of the house.
Kuntabai stared after Nivedita, troubled and bewildered. "Hey Ram," she cried out. "What is happening here?" She wandered round the house, looking for Vinod. It was clear at the child needed help. Medical help. Badly. And soon! Where had that boy disappeared without telling anyone? This day, of all the days?
Vinod, however, when he ultimately returned, laughed at her fearS. "Yes Dadi, it's true that she has a deathwish for this other woman. It is but natural! She was at an extremely vulnerable age when Father left us. But she's been working it out of her system in her own way. At least that's a healthy sign." He shook his head at the sceptical look on her face. "Don't believe? Come, I'll show you something. But," he cautioned, "you must keep it to yourself.".
It was quite dark now. A little past 7.30 pm. Vinod led Kuntabai onto the terrace. Not normally given to imaginative fancies, the old lady could not repress a twinge of apprehension that shuddered through her body as she followed Vinod. He switched on the terrace lights, then went straight to the rock garden, knelt, lifted a few rocks and stood back, his eyes on Kuntabai's horror-stricken face as she beheld what was lying below the rocks: a messy, elongated lump of wax with several pins stuck onto it. The sharpness of the figurine was a little blurred by the passage of time, but the figure was still fairly recognizable as a female one.
"Nivedita's brand of voodoo," quipped Vinod with ill-judged jocularity.
"You call this 'healthy'? Kuntabai glared at him, her face puckered with worry.
Vinod shrugged his shoulders. "This kind of thing is harmless enough," he said casually. "This way, Nivedita can expend some of her frustration and resentment on something tangible, instead of bottling it all up inside her."
"Surely something should be done about her?" said Nivedita's grandmother, her heart troubled.
Vinod laughed mirthlessly. "There's no sense in rocking the boat right now. God alone knows how she may react to the suggestion of therapy. And," he added savagely, "I'm not having any sister of mine locked up!"
"Do you think it might come to that?" she inquired, alarmed. Her flash of temper at his flippancy had been replaced by an urgent sense of concern about Nivedita. "Beta. . . what is your professional opinion? As a Doctor?"
Vinod shrugged pettishly. "I'm a GP as of now, not a specialist, much less a psychiatrist. My professional opinion in Nivedita's case won't be worth a damn!"
Something in his tone made the old lady look up at his face appraisingly. "Problems at the hospital?"
"Just the usual," Vinod muttered irascibly. "Petty jealousies, trying to keep a good man down because they themselves can't rise further." He looked at Kuntabai, noted her slight look of bewilderment at his suddenly vicious tone, and gave a determinedly brave smile. "Don't you worry Dadi, I'll make good someday. See if I don't! I'll get the money somehow and set up a clinic of my own."
The old lady patted his shoulder, looking more troubled than ever.
They went back to the drawing room, and Kuntabai froze.
Standing with his back to them stood Prakash at the bar, pouring himself a measure of whisky. He appeared to have showered and changed. He turned and encountered his mother's condemning look. Without uttering a word, she turned her back on her son and walked out of the room.
Prakash looked at Vinod helplessly. "Looks like everyone is against me. Except you." He took a gulp and said gruffly, "I've not said this to you earlier, Vinod, but I really do appreciate your . . . your feelings for me; the support and affection you've shown me all through this . . . this. . . " He seemed to falter, which was unusual for him, and looked at Vinod with unaccustomed gratitude. "Y ou've been more of a son to me than anybody ever could have been!"
"It's your life, Father. I've always believed that people should be free to do what they want." He smiled at Prakash wryly, adding meaningly, "React as they want, reflect the attitudes they want!"
"Point taken," sighed Prakash, draining his glass. ''I'm going out for a stroll. I think I'll skip having dinner here tonight, under the circumstances. " Vinod nodded. "Take your time."
* * * *
Dina, in the meanwhile, had been glad to be by herself in the house. Karuna's death had brought horne to her the inevitability of her own mortality and transported it from the level of the subconscious to the ultra-conscious. Her approaching birthday merely served to heighten the feeling. Creeping upon her insidiously.
What would happen to her soul after her death was no longer her prime concern. The more'tangible worry was, what in God's name would they do to her body?
"What will happen to you when you die?" an inner voice taunted her. "Karuna at least has had all ceremonies performed for her. The religious rites of her faith. What will happen to you . . . to you . . . when you die?"
Suddenly, Dina knew what she could do. What she had to do. The only thing to be done. And it would be in keeping with her own image of herself. Of altruism. And selflessness.
She picked up the telephone and dialled Banoo Maa. Then she called out to Fatima to make her a cup of tea. Then she got out pen and paper and began to write. . .
* * * *
Prakash returned to his old home and entered the drawing room to find his daughter by herself, sitting curled up on the sofa, rather like a cat. She looked up as he carne in, and to his astonished delight, actually gave him a slight smile! A queer, unfathomable smile. But a smile nonetheless.
He was encouraged to go and sit next to her on the sofa. She leaned her head on his arm and rubbed her cheek against it. The gesture was disturbingly feline. And quite out of character. But then, Prakash hadn't known her for so long, now! He awkwardly patted her hand, lying delicately on his thigh. He was not quite sure what to say. Nivedita solved that problem for him. She startled him by asking how Dina was.
To Prakash, it was a bolt from the blue. His astonishment at her sudden, strange question was obvious enough even to Nivedita, causing her to break into explanations.
"I've been thinking," she said in a rush, "Especially after Mama's death. And I feel I've been wrong to feel this way about her." Nivedita looked up at her father with wide, innocent eyes, saying earnestly, "1' d like to get to know her, Papa; maybe. . . maybe make friends with her.
I'd like to meet her. Really!"
Too dazed and overwhelmed to question her sudden reversal, Prakash squeezed his daughter's arm. "I knew it," he told her. "I was sure that some time, some day, you'd change your attitude towards Dina. See darling, I've got to go for a business trip for a couple of weeks to Poona. We shall all have a small family dinner after I return. You can meet her then. How's that?"
Nivedita frowned and traced a pattern on his sleeve with her finger. "Can't I just myself meet her earlier?" she asked in a small-girl voice. "When are you leaving?"
Prakash thought for a moment and made a quick decision. "Okay, Baby. We'll do this. It's her birthday the day after tomorrow. I'll be leaving from here tomorrow evening after the ceremonies are over, and going back to Cuffe Parade. Why don't you come over, day after tomorrow in the morning, before her family lands up for lunch? Will that be all right?" "Yes," replied Nivedita, sounding pleased. 'I'll come on her Birthday first thing in the morning, and greet her. That will be appropriate. Yes, that will be very appropriate!"
*
Prakash shook out his kurta-pajamas out of the overnighter, trying to reorient himself with his surroundings.
Back in these walls after a gap of ten years! So far, his daughter had hardly spoken to him. His mother who had come down from Baroda had been resting in the room allotted to her. She was as yet unaware of his presence in the house. He wondered how she would greet him now, after all these years. Ten years ago, she had vowed that he was no longer any son of hers.
Dina, of course, would play merry hell if she got to know! But that was a remote possibility he had been impelled to risk. He had had to come here, for Karuna's twelfth day ceremonies. He just had to! He'd stay here overnight, sharing Vinod's room, and leave the next evening.
It was just a matter of a day and a half, really!
Prakash glanced at his watch. Almost 5 in the evening. Arun and 5uchitra had been closeted in their room, after greeting Prakash briefly. But thank God they, at least, did not display any animosity towards him! Arun was a sophisticated, highly educated man. Prakash hardly knew Suchitra, but she seemed sensible enough. He sighed, trying to shrug off past ghosts. Vinod should be in shortly.
Here he was! Prakash smiled slightly at him and went on unpacking his overnighter, while Vinod prowled around, making desultory conversation. Vinod had cleared some space for him on the small bedside table, so Prakash could keep some of his stuff there shaving cream, after-shave cream, cologne, a silver-wrapped package tied with gold thread, tooth brush and paste, razor, bottles and strips of capsules . . .
He laid out a pair of clothes on the back of a chair, unwrapped his bedroom slippers, then took Vinod by the arm, led him to the bed and sat down with him. "Now, Vinod, tell me. . ." began Prakash.
* * * *
While her fatehr and Vinod had been conversing, Nivedita was crying her heart out in her grandmother's lap.
"There there child, don't take on so," crooned Kuntabai, stroking the long black hair spread out on her white saree'd lap.
The sobbing ended in a series of shudders. The stream iof tears dried up a tlast. Nivedita raised a white, red-eyed face, her thick hair billowing out like a storm cloud pregnant with rain, and gazed blindly ahead of her.
Just as Kuntabai was beginning to feel a bit uneasy about that fixed unfocused stare, Nivedita pronounced, "Now I know what I have to do. I shall do it! I have to do it!" in a queer calm tone, as though repeating a lesson learnt by rote. Then she ran out of the room before her startled grandmother could react, and rushed straight like a homing pigeon into her brother's room.
There was nobody there. But even in that empty room, Nivedita could feel her father's presence almost tangibly. . . in the clothes piled up on a chair. . . in the toiletries lying on Vinod's dressing table. . . in the shining silver package, indecently opulent in this house of mourning.
Nivedita crept closer to the package and read the message on the card stuck on to it. She felt an almost physical shock of anger, mingled with pain. "And my mother's ashes not yet immersed," she thought to erself resentfully, turning and walking blindly out of Vinod's room. She blundered into her grandmother who had come into the living room, and rushed past her without a word to the main door, and out of the house.
Kuntabai stared after Nivedita, troubled and bewildered. "Hey Ram," she cried out. "What is happening here?" She wandered round the house, looking for Vinod. It was clear at the child needed help. Medical help. Badly. And soon! Where had that boy disappeared without telling anyone? This day, of all the days?
Vinod, however, when he ultimately returned, laughed at her fearS. "Yes Dadi, it's true that she has a deathwish for this other woman. It is but natural! She was at an extremely vulnerable age when Father left us. But she's been working it out of her system in her own way. At least that's a healthy sign." He shook his head at the sceptical look on her face. "Don't believe? Come, I'll show you something. But," he cautioned, "you must keep it to yourself.".
It was quite dark now. A little past 7.30 pm. Vinod led Kuntabai onto the terrace. Not normally given to imaginative fancies, the old lady could not repress a twinge of apprehension that shuddered through her body as she followed Vinod. He switched on the terrace lights, then went straight to the rock garden, knelt, lifted a few rocks and stood back, his eyes on Kuntabai's horror-stricken face as she beheld what was lying below the rocks: a messy, elongated lump of wax with several pins stuck onto it. The sharpness of the figurine was a little blurred by the passage of time, but the figure was still fairly recognizable as a female one.
"Nivedita's brand of voodoo," quipped Vinod with ill-judged jocularity.
"You call this 'healthy'? Kuntabai glared at him, her face puckered with worry.
Vinod shrugged his shoulders. "This kind of thing is harmless enough," he said casually. "This way, Nivedita can expend some of her frustration and resentment on something tangible, instead of bottling it all up inside her."
"Surely something should be done about her?" said Nivedita's grandmother, her heart troubled.
Vinod laughed mirthlessly. "There's no sense in rocking the boat right now. God alone knows how she may react to the suggestion of therapy. And," he added savagely, "I'm not having any sister of mine locked up!"
"Do you think it might come to that?" she inquired, alarmed. Her flash of temper at his flippancy had been replaced by an urgent sense of concern about Nivedita. "Beta. . . what is your professional opinion? As a Doctor?"
Vinod shrugged pettishly. "I'm a GP as of now, not a specialist, much less a psychiatrist. My professional opinion in Nivedita's case won't be worth a damn!"
Something in his tone made the old lady look up at his face appraisingly. "Problems at the hospital?"
"Just the usual," Vinod muttered irascibly. "Petty jealousies, trying to keep a good man down because they themselves can't rise further." He looked at Kuntabai, noted her slight look of bewilderment at his suddenly vicious tone, and gave a determinedly brave smile. "Don't you worry Dadi, I'll make good someday. See if I don't! I'll get the money somehow and set up a clinic of my own."
The old lady patted his shoulder, looking more troubled than ever.
They went back to the drawing room, and Kuntabai froze.
Standing with his back to them stood Prakash at the bar, pouring himself a measure of whisky. He appeared to have showered and changed. He turned and encountered his mother's condemning look. Without uttering a word, she turned her back on her son and walked out of the room.
Prakash looked at Vinod helplessly. "Looks like everyone is against me. Except you." He took a gulp and said gruffly, "I've not said this to you earlier, Vinod, but I really do appreciate your . . . your feelings for me; the support and affection you've shown me all through this . . . this. . . " He seemed to falter, which was unusual for him, and looked at Vinod with unaccustomed gratitude. "Y ou've been more of a son to me than anybody ever could have been!"
"It's your life, Father. I've always believed that people should be free to do what they want." He smiled at Prakash wryly, adding meaningly, "React as they want, reflect the attitudes they want!"
"Point taken," sighed Prakash, draining his glass. ''I'm going out for a stroll. I think I'll skip having dinner here tonight, under the circumstances. " Vinod nodded. "Take your time."
* * * *
Dina, in the meanwhile, had been glad to be by herself in the house. Karuna's death had brought horne to her the inevitability of her own mortality and transported it from the level of the subconscious to the ultra-conscious. Her approaching birthday merely served to heighten the feeling. Creeping upon her insidiously.
What would happen to her soul after her death was no longer her prime concern. The more'tangible worry was, what in God's name would they do to her body?
"What will happen to you when you die?" an inner voice taunted her. "Karuna at least has had all ceremonies performed for her. The religious rites of her faith. What will happen to you . . . to you . . . when you die?"
Suddenly, Dina knew what she could do. What she had to do. The only thing to be done. And it would be in keeping with her own image of herself. Of altruism. And selflessness.
She picked up the telephone and dialled Banoo Maa. Then she called out to Fatima to make her a cup of tea. Then she got out pen and paper and began to write. . .
* * * *
Prakash returned to his old home and entered the drawing room to find his daughter by herself, sitting curled up on the sofa, rather like a cat. She looked up as he carne in, and to his astonished delight, actually gave him a slight smile! A queer, unfathomable smile. But a smile nonetheless.
He was encouraged to go and sit next to her on the sofa. She leaned her head on his arm and rubbed her cheek against it. The gesture was disturbingly feline. And quite out of character. But then, Prakash hadn't known her for so long, now! He awkwardly patted her hand, lying delicately on his thigh. He was not quite sure what to say. Nivedita solved that problem for him. She startled him by asking how Dina was.
To Prakash, it was a bolt from the blue. His astonishment at her sudden, strange question was obvious enough even to Nivedita, causing her to break into explanations.
"I've been thinking," she said in a rush, "Especially after Mama's death. And I feel I've been wrong to feel this way about her." Nivedita looked up at her father with wide, innocent eyes, saying earnestly, "1' d like to get to know her, Papa; maybe. . . maybe make friends with her.
I'd like to meet her. Really!"
Too dazed and overwhelmed to question her sudden reversal, Prakash squeezed his daughter's arm. "I knew it," he told her. "I was sure that some time, some day, you'd change your attitude towards Dina. See darling, I've got to go for a business trip for a couple of weeks to Poona. We shall all have a small family dinner after I return. You can meet her then. How's that?"
Nivedita frowned and traced a pattern on his sleeve with her finger. "Can't I just myself meet her earlier?" she asked in a small-girl voice. "When are you leaving?"
Prakash thought for a moment and made a quick decision. "Okay, Baby. We'll do this. It's her birthday the day after tomorrow. I'll be leaving from here tomorrow evening after the ceremonies are over, and going back to Cuffe Parade. Why don't you come over, day after tomorrow in the morning, before her family lands up for lunch? Will that be all right?" "Yes," replied Nivedita, sounding pleased. 'I'll come on her Birthday first thing in the morning, and greet her. That will be appropriate. Yes, that will be very appropriate!"
*
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.
*
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