FIR

by Monabi Mitra

  Tara rose to close the door and caught a glimpse of the maid laughing to herself as she fled down the stairs. In the room, Robi carefully picked up a biscuit and began to eat it hungrily. His eyes darted back and forth from his teacup to the plate of biscuits. Crumbs began to cluster round his lips. Still he ate and Tara, watching him from her chair, wondered at the insatiable appetite, the unfed urges, of her cousin. When he had finished eating, Robi leaned back in his wheelchair and closed his eyes. His right hand lay on his lap, swollen and white, like his feet, the fingers moving spasmodically. He spoke after a minute and his voice was once again controlled. ‘I know how hard it must be for Nisha to have me laid up here like a burden. She’s borne it all so wonderfully. Never complaining, not even for a minute.’

  A car reversed in the driveway. Tara figured this from the tinny Hindu devotional song the vehicle belted out as it did so. She wondered which of Nisha’s guests would be inelegant enough to have such a tune.

  ‘She’s had to work harder too, ever since I’ve been laid up. Poor thing! Something or the other always seems to be going wrong at work. Organizing, making all those idiots work, and putting together prints and stuff for all those interiors she has to design. There are times when she has to stay out late, very late. She says she can’t bear to leave me alone, untended, in Buro’s hands, but I explained to her that there’s no option. Money runs out so fast.’

  Robi stopped for a moment to survey the imagined effects of his dwindling assets. Tara, too, looked around the room. The large, teakwood four-poster, the flowery bedcover thrown carelessly over it, the dark, polished cupboard that ran the whole length of one wall, the handy marble-topped tables in corners, the expensive Tibetan rug—all so expensive, exclusive. Unbidden, there came into her mind a picture of her parents’ bedroom and its worn furniture, the cheap bedcover, the steel almirah, the State Bank of India calendar on the wall. Impatiently, Tara cut Robi short. ‘Baba said you wanted me over for something important.’

  ‘Did I?’

  Robi appeared to think, shuffled his feet and reached for the walking stick. ‘I do wish Buro would come up.’

  He’s treading cautiously, thought Tara, which means he wants me to do something and not tell Nisha about it. I wonder what it is that he doesn’t want Nisha to know. She looked at her cousin with renewed interest. Robi was digging into his pockets for something. He pulled out an enormous silk handkerchief, blew his nose, sniffled, then put the handkerchief back in his pocket. He looked at Tara keenly and began: ‘Nothing important, maybe it’s nothing, really. I just wanted to look at some old photographs with you. Out of the old album.’

  Tara sat back in relief. The moment had passed and she was safe. There was no need to exert herself to negotiate some impossible demand that would require her to cross swords with Nisha. Deep in her heart, Tara was terrified of her sister-in-law’s self-assurance.

  Robi continued to talk, his pace increasing, and he became increasingly difficult to understand. ‘Nobody understands my feelings anymore. Nobody cares. Nisha’s not even interested in digging out the album. You’re the only one left who still understands the importance of memories.’

  Tara sighed. ‘Where are the albums?’

  ‘Will you find it tedious? You look tired already.’

  ‘I work, and I’ve come here after a hard day. If it was just a matter of family photographs you could have kept it for the weekend. The way Baba put it, it sounded as if you wanted me here for something terribly important.’

  ‘Well, actually, there is something else, but we can discuss it after tea.’

  ‘We can talk about it now,’ said Tara quietly. So there was something else!

  ‘I don’t know how to begin.’ Robi looked awkward. ‘Look, Tara, there was a time when you and I were friends, really good friends. Remember those fabulous holidays we had, dad and mum and uncle and aunt and you and I going to Puri and Darjeeling?’

  Tara remembered. They travelled by first-class coach, which meant non-air-conditioned compartments with two kinds of windows which were slid up and down according to need, a glass one inside and a slatted wooden one on the outside. They drank water out of an enormous round flask and lurched up and down the corridor while their fathers played cards and their mothers gossiped. At least, Tara’s mother gossiped while Robi’s mother listened with an indulgent smile on her face. She had been pretty and stylish and had studied in a convent run by missionaries while Tara’s mother went to a suburban Bengali-medium school.

  ‘Remember the joint birthday parties we had? Your mum dressed you and put jasmine garlands in your hair and small garlands on your wrists. We had payesh for lunch and went out to Park Street to buy cakes for the evening.’

  ‘Where your mother looked resplendent and perfectly in place in her close-cut sleeveless blouse with her hair piled high in a coiffure while my mother stood nervously behind, sweating faintly and looking ugly in her cotton sari.’

  Robi was quick to catch the bitterness in Tara. ‘Your mother is a good lady. Simple and good.’

  ‘You mean naïve and trusting.’

  ‘Why do you say that? Has anyone ever broken her trust in any way?’

  Tara wanted to say, yes, your parents did, but the fools didn’t understand and pretend not to even now, but stayed silent. A chill had crept into the room that had nothing to do with the AC.

  ‘Mum adored her. She always said that your mother had taught her more about life and how to face it than anyone else. Apart from teaching her how to fry luchis and make shukto.’ Robi seemed bent on mining as many fond memories as he could. Tara grew restless. ‘I keep thinking of our childhood and those happy days. We weren’t very well off but at least we were contented. Much more than we are now, when we’ve got all this and much more, more than we could ever imagine when we were children.’

  Tara ran her fingers over the luxurious velvet cushion. ‘Not we, but you. Both of us dreamt, but only you made it. I haven’t had it as good as you!’

  ‘I know. That’s why I’m making you an offer you can’t refuse. I’ll buy you a small flat. Near the airport, if you want, so that you can watch the planes take off and think of the places you can go to and the wonderful holidays you can have. Singapore, even Thailand.’

  Tara stared in disbelief. She wondered if Robi had gone mad, perhaps due to the interminable months—almost five years now—he’d spent as an invalid. Robi understood her silence to be assent. Words tripped out in a near-intoxicated rush. ‘Think of it, Tara. A place of your own, a beautiful modern flat! Your bedroom would look over a walking track and a landscaped garden. There might even be a swimming pool. You can sit by the pool on a full moon night and sing.’

  Oblivious of the comic potential of the scene he had just described, Robi rattled on. Finally, Tara found her voice. ‘But why?’

  ‘So that you can lead a decent life.’ Robi looked crafty. ‘We only need to work out the deal. Fine-tune the situation.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘It’s quite simple. Your father and I have worked it out. We settle his claim to this house by buying you a flat somewhere around …’ Here, Robi named a neighbourhood in a part of suburban Calcutta where retired commoners bought dreary flats with impossible names like Cosy Nook and Walden Estate.

  ‘It would be good for them,’ continued Robi enthusiastically. ‘Fresh air and tranquillity. No worries.’

  Tara thought of the advertisements for apartments she had seen on billboards along the roads and on the backs of buses. Happy families—husband, wife, their two children and a grandparent or two—clustered around a swimming pool or a park, reading newspapers and laughing delightedly while the apartment blocks rose benignly behind them.

  Robi continued blithely. ‘Think of the benefits. You get a whole flat free of cost.’

  ‘And gift all the rights we have on this one to you!’ Tara got up and picking her purse, stood before him. She hoped he wouldn’t notice her trembling hands. ‘It won’t work. In any case, it was
silly of you to hope that I’d agree to this preposterous suggestion.’

  She could see Robi’s jaw twitch and a vein stick out on his forehead. His right hand had begun its incessant fidgeting again, the fingers curling and uncurling shakily. He looked both pathetic and malignant. Were he to die now, a part of her mind thought, it would serve him right for underestimating her intelligence.

  ‘You’ll be shorry for thish,’ said Robi, his words slurring in rage. ‘Your fathersh agreed so you can’t have any objection.’

  ‘You can enter into any agreement with my father without my consent, legally,’ said Tara. ‘You can make sneaky deals behind my back with an unworldly and ignorant old man. But you’ll have to deal with me first.’

  ‘No wonder you’ve never had a boyfriend!’ Robi stretched out a shaking hand towards the calling bell. ‘You’ll never get married either, at this rate. Poor Tara! Prim Tara! Sitting alone in a poky room in the dead of night because all the men have passed you by!’

  Tears pricked Tara’s eyes and rolled unbidden down her cheek. ‘Clean up the mess inside your own house before taunting others. Do you know what your wife does for quick money? But perhaps you do know and yet can’t do anything about it.’

  They stopped at that and sudden silence filled the room. Tara could hear noises from the street. A truck roared past and the floor shuddered for an instant. Robi could hear quick steps up the wooden stairs. His eyes hurt and there was a ringing in his ears. The desire to urinate was overwhelming and he contained himself with an effort bordering on pain.

  When Nisha Bose entered the room she guessed at once that something terrible had happened. The two figures in the room seemed graven in stone. Fear shot through Nisha’s heart. What rash thing had Robi said that would undo months and years of careful design and hard work? Calling out to Buro and leaving Robi in his hands, she gave herself up to Tara and set about repairing the damage.

  They withdrew to the adjoining room and stayed there for half an hour. A lesser woman might have failed but Nisha was as intelligent as she was beautiful. She shed her queenly manner and begged Tara for forgiveness and understanding. After a while Tara, too, surrendered, not just to Nisha and her charm but to the spell of money and plenty that the house cast. Tara was too hard-headed not to understand Nisha’s act but was exhausted in body and spirit. For a while, it felt good to be deceived by her.

  ‘Let’s be friends, Tara,’ Nisha ended. ‘Don’t let Robi’s madness come between us. What he said and did today is the kind of thing I have to put up with daily, now, since his illness. Sometimes I feel I’ll lose myself in his insane world. That’s why I party and have men friends and occasional flings. You and I are the same age, so you’ll understand. But you have a whole lifetime ahead of you, why, you haven’t even begun. People say I’m beautiful but where has my beauty got me? Come out with me more often, Tara, and see what the day brings. I’m scared of pushing you because you’re so much more intelligent than I am and I keep thinking you’ll snub me. Nikki’s having a party on Thursday, just a small and informal group. I wish you’d come with us. Some of Nikki’s friends have seen you here and find you alluring; you’re so different from all the silly girls on the party scene. You will come, won’t you?’ Nisha’s glib words washed over Tara and soothed her. She looked into Nisha’s clear deep eyes and decided to lose herself in them. In that great moment of weakness, Tara agreed.

  A man, coiled on a motorcycle, his face partially covered with a black scarf, roared up to another man’s house, pulled out a revolver, fired five shots that sounded like crackers after a triumphant India–Pakistan cricket match and roared away. Siddique Ali, who had stepped out of his front door to say goodbye to his in-laws, staggered to the ground as blood spurted crazily out of him. As the women screamed and passers-by stumbled for cover, Siddique Ali felt his nerves numbing and the walls dancing. A sensation of terrible blackness, almost solid in its density, descended upon him. The last thing he saw was the orange evening sky with a single wispy star that seemed to beckon to him before the darkness took him away.

  Ghosh had plotted and planned all morning to go home early because his wife had a cousin visiting from USA for a long-awaited family reunion. Mrs Ghosh had tormented Ghosh all morning and noon with her ceaseless reminders.

  The call came through just as Ghosh reached his front door. The door had a Ganesha sticker and a nameplate that said ‘Moloyendu Kumar Ghosh, Inspector of Police, Crime Branch’. ‘Ullo,’ he managed, still breathing hard.

  ‘It’s me, Kabir. I’ve got some bad news.’

  ‘I’ve taken a half-day’s casual leave after two years. I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘You don’t have to.’

  The door opened and a frowning Mrs Ghosh, dressed in a starched cotton sari that had elaborate gold zari work all along the border, stood shaking her head and pointing at her watch.

  ‘Siddique Ali is dead.’

  Since the connection went fuzzy, all Ghosh heard was ‘is dead’. A spasm of fear shot through him. Had the chief minister copped it? Mrs Ghosh was in a sufficiently military mood today to say no to his going even for that. He sat down on the sofa and felt for his boots over the vast expanse of his stomach. ‘Who is dead? I can’t hear you, who did you say?’

  ‘Siddique Ali, your source. The guy who was giving you information about Babul. Someone on a motorbike pumped bullets into him this evening at around 5.30 or six.’

  ‘Where was this?’

  ‘Outside his house. He had gone there last night to meet his family. Some kind of get-together.’

  One shoe had been clawed off but the other remained. Ghosh had been pulling off his sock, now he sat back and abandoned his work. The pest, the bastard, the prick! Hadn’t he told Siddique a million times not to be seen around his house, his neighbourhood, or anywhere near that place?

  ‘Is he dead?’

  He knew the answer even before it came. ‘Yes, brought in dead to hospital.’

  Ghosh remembered Siddique Ali’s vacant staring face as he had explained to him the dangers confronting him. He had hoped he had not overstated the problem, since no one would ever turn up to give information to the police if he had, but Siddique Ali had been trusting to a maddening degree. ‘No one will ever get at me, now that you have taken over my life. You’ll look after me, I know.’

  ‘I will, but you will have to help me. Stay away from your girl in Sonagachi and, whatever you do, DON’T GO NEAR YOUR FAMILY.’ Ghosh had shouted so hard he had had a coughing fit and Siddique Ali had produced a menthol lozenge to calm him.

  Now he was dead. His first-class source! He had been sure of slowly getting at Babul through him and making some inroads into the gang smuggling drugs and counterfeit currency along the Indo–Bangladesh border. And all because a man who had slit open throats, done drugs, stolen, killed and maimed couldn’t say no to his in-laws! What the hell was he supposed to do now?

  Mrs Ghosh hovered in the background, looking suspicious. ‘I hope we are going.’

  ‘We are, but …’

  ‘But?’ Her voice was harsh.

  Ghosh grimaced. ‘Nothing, let’s go.’

  ‘Don’t make it sound like you are doing me a big favour. After all the nonsense I’ve swallowed all these years, you think you’re doing me a favour!’ Her voice became shriller. ‘If this had been your mother or your sister, would you have …’

  ‘Listen, cut it out. Not in front of the guards, they’ll report everything.’

  ‘Let them, is it a crime?’

  ‘Is there anything to eat?’

  ‘No. I said we’d be in time for an early dinner.’

  Ghosh limped to his bedroom and hunted for a towel, then suddenly slumped down on the bed and put a pillow over his eyes. His ears buzzed and his eyes stung. He was a veteran of many sudden deaths, but Siddique Ali’s passing was painful. Was he getting old? Would they ever be able to get Babul now? Was it his fault that he hadn’t been able to give adequate protection to Siddi
que Ali? Had someone from the local thana ratted on him?

  ‘Are you ready? It’s getting late!’

  Ghosh groaned and raised himself. He would go up to the rooftop at his sister-in-law’s house under the pretext of admiring her potted plants and report everything to Bikram.

  3

  At every party there is a corner to which the out-of-place invitee slowly drifts. Tara found her little spot between a showcase and a corner lamp. All around her shimmered shades of black and brilliant blue. Men and women trotted around the room in little eddies, greeting, exclaiming, their faces flushed. Some of the better-known guests were ushered in from the door and they entered, bobbing and nodding, shaking hands even as their eyes looked over the shoulder for the next guest. The conversations picked up threads discarded at previous parties. Tara was miserable. And with reason.

  ‘She wouldn’t fit in, my dear,’ Nikki Kumar, the hostess, had said with characteristic bluntness when discussing the guest list with Nisha. ‘She doesn’t drink and can’t dance. Besides, she can’t even dress right.’ But Nisha was insistent. ‘I suppose I need to do something for her now and then,’ she said piously. ‘Let her meet some men. She’s quite attractive in her own way. Some men like this kind of unsophisticated innocence.’

  ‘I don’t believe she hasn’t had a fling with someone. Some obliging guy next door or perhaps someone from college about whom you don’t know.’

  Nisha, pushing a coaster idly round the table, head tilted at an angle as she cradled the cordless receiver, smiled. The image of Tara sitting, almost mortified by embarrassment, in the company of strange men, sprang to her mind. Nisha’s hand unconsciously strayed to her hair, traced the lines of her cheek, her lips, and reminded herself of her own beauty. ‘Well anyway, you must invite Tara. Robi too would like that. Sometimes he feels a little put out by all the noise and dazzle. Says it draws too much attention to him.’