Love and Longing in Bombay

by Vikram Chandra

  “Have you been thinking about what you did?” Sartaj said.

  “I didn’t do what you said,” Ghorpade said. His eyes were yellowish, rheumy.

  “You better decide to tell me the truth,” Sartaj said. “Or it’ll be bad for you.”

  Ghorpade shut his eyes again. Katekar widened his stance, and flexed his shoulders. But Sartaj shook his head, and said, “Ghorpade, where do you live? Do you have a family?”

  Ghorpade spoke without opening his eyes. “I don’t live anywhere.”

  “Do you have a wife?”

  “I had.”

  “What happened?”

  “She ran away.”

  “Why?”

  “I beat her.”

  “Why?”

  Ghorpade shrugged.

  “How old are you, Ghorpade?”

  Sartaj could hear the sparrows in the yard outside. Then finally Ghorpade spoke: “I was born the year before the Chinese war.”

  Outside, under the sky which was clouded again, Sartaj considered the slight possibility that he and Ghorpade shared birthdays. He had no idea why it seemed important. Now Moitra, whose first name was Suman, roared into the yard in her new Jeep. They had been batchmates in Nasik, and on the first day of the course she had let them know that she was twice as intelligent and thrice as tough as any of them. Sartaj had no problems with this, especially since it was probably true.

  “Did he confess?” she said, bounding up the stairs. “Closing the case?”

  “I’m investigating,” Sartaj said. “This is an investigation, Moitra. Remember?”

  “Investigating what?” Moitra said over her shoulder as she sped down the corridor. “Investigating whom?”

  *

  “Where is your mother?”

  Kshitij was standing square in the middle of his doorway, his shoulders taut.

  “What do you want with my mother?”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s here. Resting. She’s not well. She’s sleeping.”

  “I want to talk to her.”

  “Why?”

  “This is a murder case. We talk to everyone concerned.”

  “What does my mother have to do with a murder case?”

  “She was married to your father,” Sartaj said, stepping forward. Kshitij stayed where he was and Sartaj put the palm of his hand against the boy’s chest and pushed. Kshitij stumbled back, and Sartaj went past him into the drawing room.

  “What do you want? Do you have a warrant? Why are you here? I heard you have a suspect in custody,” Kshitij said, following closely, but then Katekar had him by the arm and against the wall. Sartaj turned and Kshitij swallowed and subsided. Sartaj leaned forward and put his face close to Kshitij and watched him for a long moment, let him look and feel the pace of his anger as they listened to each other’s breathing. Then he turned away abruptly and stalked through the room, towards the bedroom. Inside, the cupboards stood open, and the double bed and the floor were littered with paper. She was sitting on the balcony that opened out onto the swamp, and far away across muddy patches of green, the silver haze of the sea.

  “Mrs. Patel?”

  When she turned to him her face was dense with grief. He cleared his throat and set forth briskly into his questions, when did you last see your husband, did he seem worried recently, were there any phone calls that upset him, were you aware of enemies and quarrels, were you aware of money difficulties, were you. She answered each time with a shake of the head, holding a hand at her throat. Her age was forty-nine, but her hair was a brilliant black, lustrous even in its disarray, and Sartaj looked at her, and thought that just a few days ago she must have been very pleasantly attractive, and that fact also settled into the confusion that surrounded the life and death of Chetanbhai Ghanshyam Patel.

  Finally he asked: “Can you tell me anything else? Is there anything else I should know?”

  “No,” she said. “No.” But the word was heavy with regret, and Sartaj followed her glance over his shoulder to the doorway to the bedroom, past Katekar, to the corridor where Kshitij’s shadow lingered. When he turned back to Mrs. Patel she was weeping, holding the end of her pallu to her eyes. And Sartaj, to his own surprise, felt a swell of emotion, rising like a knot in his chest.

  In the bedroom, two of the cupboards were stacked full of shirts. Sartaj ran a finger up and down the row of the suits, rattling the wooden hangers against each other. The two other cupboards, against the opposite wall, were empty. He squatted and picked up a small booklet and flattened it out against his knee. It was a bank chequebook, with neat little tick marks in blue pencil next to the cheques and deposits. The closing balance was one lakh forty-six thousand rupees. He put the bank book in his pocket, and straightened up. There was a kind of grief in the wild litter across the room. Over these debris Sartaj began a quick but methodical survey, in a back-and-forth grid. In this practised routine there was a kind of relief.

  “Aren’t you supposed to have two witnesses for a panchnama if you do a search?” Kshitij said from the doorway.

  “Am I doing a search?” Sartaj said.

  “It looks like you are.”

  “I’m just looking around. Why is all this on the floor?”

  “I, I was just cleaning up. Sorting things out.”

  “Yes, I see,” Sartaj said. After a murder some people tidied up. Others cooked, made huge quantities of food that nobody would or could eat. But every time there was an attempt to find one’s way back to ordinary days. And all the paper on the floor was a record of the most innocuous kind of life: birth, insurance, deposits, loans, payments, the bills for hard-won purchases kept carefully for years. Now it was over. Sartaj looked across the room, towards the balcony, and she was staring out at the sea again.

  Outside, in the hall, Sartaj ran his hand over the small row of books. The biography of Vivekananda, two Sidney Sheldon novels, How to Be a Better Manager.

  “He was robbed, wasn’t he?” Kshitij said, behind him. He looked tired and slight in his white shirt.

  “We are investigating,” Sartaj said. The Apsara was gone, disappeared from her space by the wall.

  “Is there any progress? What about this suspect? Who is he?”

  Sartaj was thinking about the curve of the Apsara’s shoulder. He turned his gaze with an effort and then said very directly, in his policeman’s voice, “We are investigating. We will let you know as soon as we find out anything.”

  Outside, in the stairway that wound around the lift shaft, Sartaj leaned against the wall, breathless, hunted by something he had never known.

  “Are you all right, sir?” Katekar said.

  “I’m fine,” Sartaj said. But it was a loneliness so huge and so feral that he wanted to give up and collapse into the thick green swamp he could see far below, through a barred window. Even after the papers had come, after they had been sitting on their dining table for a week, he had never believed that the word “divorce” meant something real. In his whole life he had never known anyone who had been divorced. He had never known anybody whose parents had been divorced. He couldn’t remember a friend who had known anybody who had been divorced. Divorce was something that strange people did in the pages of Society magazine. His breath came dragging through the pain in his throat. He took a step forward and the green swirled dizzyingly under him, and he lurched forward and it pounded in his head, but then the white wall scraped across his shoulder. Katekar put a hand under his elbow. Sartaj followed his glance: on his own uniform, there was a streak of plaster from the wall, bright against the khaki.

  Sartaj stood erect, feeling the muscles in his back, and he scraped the plaster off his shoulder with his right hand. He thumped it sharply and the white came off in little clouds. Sartaj shook his head. He tucked his shirt in, pulled up his belt, with both hands he felt the slant of his turban and corrected it. Then he smoothened his moustache, said, “I’m all right. Come on.” He walked down the stairs, to his work.

  *

&nb
sp; “Mr. Patel was a very helping kind of man,” Kaimal said. Kaimal was in his sixties, a retired merchant navy captain who lived two floors below the Patels in a flat of the same size and floor plan. “We bought together,” Kaimal said. “Seven years ago, almost exactly. Before that we rented in the same building in Santa Cruz.”

  Mrs. Kaimal brought out coffee in small steel tumblers, and Kaimal rubbed his forehead absently and ran a finger around the edge of the glass. A moment passed and Mrs. Kaimal sat down beside her husband and put a hand on his wrist. Behind them Katekar, who was a tea drinker, sniffed suspiciously at his glass. “He was very much younger than I am,” Kaimal said quietly.

  “Was he well liked in the building here?” Sartaj said.

  Kaimal looked up and nodded. “He was president of the building society for three years in a row. He organized all our functions.” Leaning forward, Kaimal said decisively, “He got jobs for the children of many people here.” He sat back, and said again, “He was younger than I am.”

  “You must have seen Kshitij grow up,” Sartaj said.

  “Yes. He is a very intelligent boy.”

  “Did his father think so?” Sartaj said.

  Kaimal looked at him consideringly, and Sartaj could see the beginnings of distaste. This was familiar: the policeman’s assumption of grief and deceit hidden in every happiness was frightening in its simplicity. It implicated everyone.

  “Of course. He was very proud of him. Very proud.”

  “And his mother is proud too?” Sartaj said.

  “What else? Of course. Kshitij is a very good son to her. It is good to see a young man with such respect for his mother these days.”

  “And were they happy together?”

  “Who?” Kaimal said.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Patel,” Sartaj said. “Were they happy?”

  “Happy?” Mrs. Kaimal said, shaking her head, exasperated. “They were husband and wife. What else would they be?”

  Sartaj finished his coffee. It was very good coffee indeed. In people like this, decent and hospitable, loyalty to the departed was always the most unbreakable bond. They were telling a truth that had become sharp and clear in the sudden glare of death, and he knew he couldn’t persuade them to turn them back towards the shadowed ambiguities that were so crucial to him. That would cause them to break with their obligations.

  “I see,” he said slowly. “I see.” He looked at Mrs. Kaimal until she shifted uncomfortably, and then both husband and wife seemed to shrink against the faded lily pattern of their sofa. Then Sartaj said quietly, “Were you aware if Mr. Patel was in any kind of trouble? Did he seem afraid? Had he told you of any threats? Quarrels?”

  “Threats?” Kaimal said. “No.”

  As Sartaj stood up they watched him apprehensively, turned their heads to watch Katekar’s thumping walk. He thanked them for the coffee, told them to contact him if they remembered anything, and then he shut the door quietly behind himself and Katekar. They were a nice old pair, handsome and finedrawn and cultured, but he had no regret for inflicting fear on them. It was what his job required of him, this distance from the rest of the world, their wariness of him, it was inevitable and necessary and he knew that very often it was this very thing that made it possible for him to grasp the truth, to see the secret and fix it, forever. Usually he thought nothing of it, never needed to, but today the click of the lock brought with it a bitter little bubble of loneliness in his mouth. He looked up and down the stairs, leaned towards the grilled door that covered the lift-shaft, and spat into the long pit. Then they went on to the next flat. As the day went on, as they walked down the stairs, from one home to another, Sartaj watched the sweat stain grow between Katekar’s shoulder blades and spread across the large breadth of his back.

  By late afternoon, from the fragments of many conversations, from hesitations and allusions and things left unsaid, he had teased out these unremarkable facts: the father was a genial man, full of humour, ready to backslap and also to come to one’s help when needed; the son was known for his intelligence, for his first rank in every exam, for his quietness; the mother was a good cook, she doted on her son and laughed at her husband’s jokes, the husband and wife went for drives every Saturday, long drives.

  *

  Sartaj learnt about Patel’s passion for his red Contessa as he stood next to it in an incense-filled garage. Patel’s driver, a tall, bulky man named Sharma, was polishing the car with a kind of melancholy patience, inch by inch and with many flourishes of a waxy rag. He had two agarbattis burning in front of a picture of Shiva—they let forth, now and then, undulating drifts of white smoke, full with the aroma of chameli, an aphrodisiacal essence of moonlight and river water and rain. Katekar strolled around the periphery of the room, looking at the cans on a shelf, the calendars on the wall.

  “He liked to listen to ghazals in the car,” Sharma said. “Every new cassette, we got. We just got new speakers.”

  Between the driver’s seat and the passenger’s there was a box full of tapes. A tape with blue writing on it was in the deck.

  “What’s that one?” Sartaj said.

  “His favourite. Mehdi Hassan. He listened to it again and again.” Sharma reached into the car and a moment later the song drifted out into the garage: Voh jo ham me turn me karaar tha, tumhe yaad ho ke ya na yaad ho

  “When was the last time he was in the car?”

  “Last Saturday. I don’t come for duty on Saturdays. But he must have gone for a ride.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Around. But he must have gone.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve worked for him for thirteen years and every Saturday he went for a drive with Memsaab. I used to pull the seat forward every Friday night for him. He liked cars. This one specially. Last weekend he even washed it.”

  “Washed it?”

  “Outside and in. It was shining clean when I came in on Monday morning.”

  It was a very long car that filled up the garage so that Sartaj had to squeeze behind it. He opened a door and leaned in. The seats were spotless, and the interior smelt of soap and ammonia. The song was gentle and a little sad and very sweet.

  “Was he worried in the last few days? Afraid of something? Upset?”

  Sharma stopped rubbing at the metal and looked up at Sartaj. “No. But I’m worried now. What will happen now to Kshitij Baba?”

  “Kshitij? Why?”

  “He has to take care of his mother. Very much love between them. Often when he was tired and had a headache he would lie with his head in her lap. I saw this when I would go up to give the car keys back in the evenings. But he’s very young. How will he manage? So young.”

  Sartaj took the rag from him and sniffed at it. “Are you afraid for your job?”

  Sharma laughed aloud. He straightened up, away from the car, and he was at least three inches taller than Sartaj, and not at all afraid. “Inspector, you know there are jobs for drivers in Bombay. No, I’m worried for him. He looked very tired today”

  “Did he take the car out?”

  “No, no. When I came this morning I saw him taking rubbish out of the building. Then again an hour later.”

  “Rubbish?”

  “Out to the dump, over there behind the wall. He looked very tired.”

  Now Mehdi Hassan sang the emperor’s old complaint about boat karni mujhe kabhi mushkil aisi to na thi, and Sartaj searched the car. He scraped under the seats and rolled the grit off the floor mats between his fingers. The glove compartment held a receipt book from a petrol pump in Santa Cruz, vehicle booklets in a plastic wrapper, a pack of playing cards, and, held together by a black metal office clip, a stack of parking receipts.

  “Where was his office?” Sartaj said.

  “Andheri East. Near Natraj Studio.”

  The receipt on top was rubber-stamped “Colaba Parking.” Getting out of the car, Sartaj thumbed through the stack, and it seemed that Chetanbhai had gone to Colaba often. Sartaj opened
the front passenger door again and knelt, trying to get as close to the floor mats as possible. A quick run of the forefinger over the underside of the front passenger seat, over the shiny metal at the very bottom, and then back, left an impression of some faint roughness, a texture across the metal. He reached into his pocket for the penknife on his keychain, and scraped with it and then held it up to the light, and there was a flakey rust on the blade, an innocuous brown the colour of farm earth after rain.

  “Look at this,” he said, holding it up to Sharma.

  “What is it?” Sharma said, peering. “Rust?”

  Sartaj’s eyes moved, and Katekar caught Sharma by the collar, bent him suddenly forward at the waist, and with a full high turn of the shoulder hit him on the broad of his back with an open palm. The crack was shockingly loud and Sartaj hissed into Sharma’s astounded face, “Did you kill him? Why did you kill him?”

  “I had nothing to do with it.”

  Sartaj looked up at Katekar, and again Katekar’s broad hand went up and came down like a piston.

  “This is blood,” Sartaj said. This was not a fact, it was less than a theory, but Sharma believed it. His eyes were full of tears, and he was panting, holding his chest with both his hands. “You didn’t know it’s very difficult to get blood cleaned, did you? No matter how much you clean there’s always a bit left. Did you wash the car?”

  “I tell you I don’t know anything about this. I swear to you.”

  “Why are you still here?”

  “I get paid for the month on the thirtieth. Sahib, I’m just a poor man. I would have gone but I get my payment on the thirtieth. Nothing else.”

  Sartaj was willing to wait and see who tried to flee. The guilty always ran. It was like starting an unknown animal out of a thicket. You tossed in a rock and waited to see what came out. “All right,” he said, and Katekar let Sharma go and stepped away. But Sharma stayed bent over, huddled to his knees, his face red. “But don’t speak to anyone regarding this matter. Don’t touch this car. Lock up the garage now and give me the key.” Sartaj said to Katekar, “Watch the garage until we can get somebody from the forensics lab down here to take a look at the car.”