‘It remains to be seen whether Ganga Kumar was just an innocent bystander or an active accessory who attended to the amorous army man’s daily needs! As of now, we have no details if she is to be arrested too,’ an excited reporter says breathlessly. ‘Madam! Madam! Why did you come to work today? Did you want to show solidarity with the general in this difficult time? Will you be visiting him in jail? How does it feel to be romantically involved with a man old enough to be your father?’
‘Hullo ji, that is enough!’ Padam Kumar’s cherubic face is red with anger. ‘I have already given you all the information, why are you asking the same questions again and again?’
‘Ganga!’ shouts another reporter. ‘Ganga! What are your feelings about your sugar daddy’s arrest?’
Behind the glass window, Ganga shakes her head, and seems to be appealing to the press to move out of her way. They ignore her, and the gherao continues.
‘The Club is going to the dogs,’ Balbir Dogra says worriedly. ‘This is terrible publicity.’
‘Dad, is that all you care about?’ Nattu demands. ‘The stupid Club?’
‘Clearly, yes,’ Kashi says wryly.
His mother grips his shoulder. ‘Wait, what, is the story over?’
A dramatic super reading KAHANI MEIN TWIST! has just filled the screen, accompanied by music. As they watch, the camera cuts back to the studio, where a famous news anchor looks gravely into the camera.
‘Viewers, a brand-new update has just been received by our intrepid reporters in the DTC Double Murder case! A key witness has just surrendered himself to Delhi Police and is being taken in for questioning. Sources claim that this key witness’s testimony is set to change the case completely and spectacularly! Let us proceed without any further delay to New Delhi Railway Station to unravel yet another layer in this fascinating double murder!’
The camera cuts to a grubby, chaotic platform at New Delhi Railway Station. A train is just chugging in. Announcements sound in the background. And then, from the thick of the noise and the dirt and the massive crowds emerges an undersized, adolescent reporter, clearly the last cookie in the jar, sent out in haste, probably at last moment’s notice from channel headquarters.
‘Oh My Gods!’ says this young, wobbly voiced person, who has clearly decided that this is his make-or-break chance to impress all of India on national television. ‘Vutt-a sensational twist in the Khooni General case! Vutt-a dwellupment!’
He gives an excited little wriggle at the end of every sentence, the peach fuzz on his upper lip shining with sweat, and his hair flopping up and down jauntily.
‘You might have heard Madhuri Dikshit madam ji’s superhit song “Mera Piya Ghar Aaya, O Ram Ji”, vich for the benefit of south-Indian viewers I vill explain … It means “My loved one has returned home, halleluiah halleluiah!” Have you heard this song? Hey, have you heard this song? No? Vul, if not, then you vill hear it now, because this is the song Ganga Kumar ji vill be singing when she hears that he is here, he is back from the dead, he was never dead at all! Ladies and gentlemen, General Mehra cannot and vill not be arrested after all, because the man whom he allegedly killed, is still alive!’
The camera turns to reveal a tired-looking man, flanked by Delhi Police constables. He has a French beard, dark circles under the eyes and a shiny Rexine backpack on his shoulder.
‘Vat is your name, sir?’ demands the callow reporter.
The newcomer swallows, then looks to the constables for permission. They nod.
‘Ajay Kumar,’ he answers in a low, halting voice.
‘And your wife’s name?’
‘Ganga Kumar.’
‘Vy have you come back to Delhi?’
He licks his lips.
‘To clear her name by proving I am still alive.’
ACP Bhavani Singh’s eyes twinkle with quiet jubilation as he lathers his chin in front of the mirror the next morning, humming ‘Mera Piya Ghar Aaya, O Ram Ji’ to himself.
Shalini enters the bathroom with two cups of tea, hands him one, slams down the lid of the toilet, sits down upon it and looks at him worriedly.
‘You’re singing that stupid song? When all the newspapers are having a laugh at your expense this morning? What is happening, Bhavani?’
Bhavani clinks his teacup with hers cheerfully.
‘You don’t have time for your husband, busy busy Shalini ji, that is what is happening! If you talked to us more often you would know what we are up to!’
She is immediately contrite. ‘Board exams are happening, Bhavani – we cannot neglect our students now. Chalo, don’t be pricey, explain what you’ve been up to!’
‘What have the newspapers called us?’ he asks.
Her face clouds over. ‘Clownish,’ she reports reluctantly. ‘And clueless and blundering. When I went out to get the milk packets, everybody in the colony looked at me sympathetically.’
Bhavani chuckles. ‘Excellent. So basically, your clownish, clueless blunderer of a husband figured out that Defence Minister Govardhan Ruia is jealous of the general, and out for his blood. Because he’s getting—’
‘Too popular,’ she says at once. ‘Of course! That makes complete sense.’
‘Yes. So, when the chief told us, in no uncertain terms, that orders had come from the top to arrest Mehra, we went ahead and complied obediently, but at the same time, we stepped up our hunt for Ajay Kumar. The drug dealer angle helped narrow the search, and we had some good pictures, so even though the fellow had no police record, we managed to track him down, alive and still peddling in a small-time way. Then we … er … persuaded him to show up in Delhi, and pretend that he had come forward on his own to clear his wife’s name.’
She leans forward and pulls his chunky cheek. ‘Clever clever ACP Brownie! Is the chief furious?’
Bhavani shrugs. ‘We suppose so. But Ruia’s scheme to discredit Mehra has failed for sure.’
Eye twinkling, he raises his teacup and clinks it with hers again.
TRANSCRIPT OF A RECORDED STATEMENT BY AJAY KUMAR.
My name is Ajay Kumar. I am a waiter at Jain Bhojanalya Restaurant in the Navi Mumbai area. I got married to Ganga Kumar four years ago. At first we were happy, but when she found out that I supplemented my livelihood by selling drugs, we started fighting.
She refused to take my ‘dirty’ money and started cleaning people’s houses instead, saying this work was more honourable than the ‘dirty work’ I was doing! Then one day she came back with so much money that I knew she had started an affair with a rich man. Naturally this maddened me, because which man wants an unfaithful wife? She denied it flatly, we kept fighting, and finally I left her.
Because I still loved her, I would sometimes come back to try and talk sense into her, but she never listened.
Then she became friends with that rich Bambi Todi, who was a feminist type and turned her against me even more, with the result that the last time I went to meet her, instead of being kind to her husband and giving him a nice meal and some cash at the very least, she phoned that Jhelum-walla general who beat me up and tried to hand me over to the police. Thankfully, Ganga had the decency to not press charges.
Things were going downhill for me. I decided to leave town before the police found out about my ganja-dealing. I had started selling other drugs also, and it was all starting to get
too dangerous.
On the night of the engagement, I told Aryaman to give me all the money he owed me, which was quite a lot. That is what our fight was about.
Finally, he gave me his watch. I sold my list of contacts to a cousin-brother and left Delhi.
I don’t know anything else.
END OF INTERVIEW.
Bhavani and Shalini have a quiet Sunday. Bhavani does his 5BX workout, then showers, cooks fluffy French toast for his wife and himself, and settles down on the living room sofa in front of the big TV to watch the complete and unedited
recording of the Bambi Todi–Anshul Poddar engagement party with single-minded concentration.
Shalini prepares a big flask of coffee, and corrects her mock-exam papers in front of the TV too, taking small breaks now and then to watch with him, oohing and aahing over the decorations, which feature masses and masses of her favourite pink Oriental lilies, and asking questions which he often ignores.
‘We feel like a midwife in a labour ward,’ she remarks after a few hours. ‘You are clearly pregnant and about to pop. We would say about … one finger dilated?’
‘Two,’ he replies, his eyes still glued to the TV screen. ‘Definitely two.’
Shalini chuckles. ‘So, is it a girl or is it a boy?’
‘Shush.’ He frowns. ‘Pre-natal sex determination is an offence and anybody seeking it will be prosecuted.’
She sticks out her tongue at him. ‘You still don’t know, do you?’
He deigns to look away from the screen long enough to say, gravely, ‘We are waiting for some final information that will confirm everything.’
But as the day advances, and he slowly, deliberately pieces the puzzle together, Bhavani’s serene mood slowly turns restless. Something, surely, must be brewing? The twisted, elegant mind that sent the gas balloons floating up to obstruct the gym camera must be at work again … Somewhere, the disarming charm that gave old Guppie Ram a feeling of love ... and dosti – and equal-equal trust must be in action! The murderer must have panicked when Ajay Kumar showed up, and the general was exonerated, that too on national television. Surely he or she could sense the net closing in, the noose tightening? Would he or she sit tight? Or lash out again? If yes, then where? At whom?
Each of his several calls to Dr Krishnan at Forensics is met with the same response: ‘need more time’. And so he continues to watch footage of Bambi Todi in her gold-and-yellow lehenga, dancing with the dashingly handsome Anshul while Kashi sulks in the background, and the DTCs Zumba ladies air-kiss each other and cheat on their diets.
It is a slow day for everybody. At the DTC the growing heat has thinned the Club lawns of patrons, and the bearers have an easy day. Across the road, at the Todi residence, Pankaj Todi hosts Gen. Mehra and Gagan Ruia for a small celebratory lunch in honour of the general’s exoneration. Gagan is all effusiveness, and presents a huge bouquet of exotic flowers to Behra Mehra, ‘with dad’s best wishes and congratulations’, a statement which would have caused Bhavani Singh to roll his eyes like a Kathakali dancer. The phrases ‘we knew you weren’t a double-murderer’ and ‘now the Club election is in the bag’ and ‘conspiracy of the Opposition, anti-national elements and Pakistan’ are repeated so many times that Bambi gets a headache and decides to walk over to the Club and chill in the Rose Garden.
Urvashi and Mukesh Khurana spend a quiet day, mostly in their bedroom, Zoom-calling their daughters and talking to each other about many, many things.
Kashi Dogra plays carrom with his grandmother, croquet with his mother, then drives up to Delhi to get some papers for the case he’s starting on Monday. His three weeks of leave are almost up, and it’s time to shift gears.
Cookie Katoch, dressed in an aggressively bohemian-looking smock, spends the day finishing a brand-new lingam. It is a mixed media piece, with glass, malachite and lapis lazuli and she is very pleased with it, humming ‘Satyam Shivam Sundaram’ to herself as she glues glittering bit of Swarovski crystal onto the piece in her garden ‘studio’.
Ganga passes the day alone, and very happy. Bambi didi has had a tough talk with Ajay Kumar, who has agreed to sign divorce papers on Monday.
And Roshni Aggarwal heads out to her favourite spa for a deep-tissue massage and a micro-dermabrasion treatment. When she finally returns home, a good four hours later, she finds her son passed out cold on the living room couch in front of a loudly playing Xbox.
Something about the extreme stillness of his body makes Roshni’s heart give the most horrid thud. The sight is too reminiscent of the state in which she and Cookie had discovered the dead body of Leo Matthew three weeks ago.
As she walks slowly towards him, telling herself not to be foolish, Roshni has a sudden, sickening premonition that the same dread, malevolent presence that had been hovering in the wood-floor gym three weeks ago is crouched here, just now, in her darkened living room, over her troubled son.
Giving a frightened little gulp, she drops her bags, rushes forward and touches Arya’s forehead. It is clammy and much too cold. She scrabbles about the couch for his wrist, tears stinging her eyes. The pulse is thin, a mere thread, beating unsteadily. When she pulls back his eyelids, all she can see are the whites of his eyes. Breathing slowly to calm the panic fluttering inside her chest, Roshni Aggarwal gets to her feet, finds her phone and dials the all-too familiar number of her son’s specialist …
Dear ACP Sa’ab,
This man is my very trusted assistant. He has travelled on my private jet to deliver this parcel to you. It has not been out of his sight for even a moment. And before that, the item it contains had been kept safely at our Alipore residence for the past five years. Be assured it is the genuine article. All the best with your investigations and requesting complete confidentiality if possible. God bless you.
Arihant Poddar
‘Sqyooz me for asking, but in this current case you are investigating, the murdered man turned out to be alive only, no?’
The girl asking this artless question is wide-eyed and very pretty – prettier than all the other prospective Mrs Padam Kumars Padam Kumar has met so far.
Pink with embarrassment, he puts down the cup of fragrant Assam tea he has just accepted from her.
‘Yes,’ he admits, somewhat huffily, to the little circle of people in the formal drawing room. ‘But it is a very complicated and strange case—’
She giggles. ‘Obviously!!’
Padam goes pinker than the flower he is named for. The girl is being intolerably cheeky. Humiliatingly, her mother, instead of restraining her, also giggles. ‘We all saw it on TV,’ she confides. ‘It was too good! The way the murda showed up, making the mote-thaanedaar sa’ab look like such a fool—’
‘He is not a thaanedaar, but an ACP and a very respected officer!’ Padam begins stiffly, but is interrupted when his entire chest starts to thrum. It takes him a while to make his excuses, put down his cup and saucer and extract the phone, which he had buttoned away, out of sight, in the chest pocket of his formal blue shirt, fearing it may not be ‘latest’ enough to impress the girl’s side. When he finally holds the despised device to his ear –
‘Where are you, yaar PK?’ Bhavani demands irritably. ‘Aryaman Aggarwal ne OD kiya hai. Come to the Medicorp Emergency at once.’
It is a very disgruntled Padam who motorcycles down to the Medicorp Hospital about half an hour later and takes the elevator to the VIP suites on the top floor. He feels nothing but resentment and contempt for his unglamorous superior, with his eccentric eleven-minute workout, his womanish insistence on non-violence, and his naive, colour-sketch-penned “The Four Golden Rules”.
When he emerges on the top floor, slightly dazzled by the plush décor which looks more suited to a five-star hotel than a hospital, Bhavani materializes at his elbow like a genie.
‘You got the forensics report?’
Wordlessly, Padam Kumar holds out a manila envelope.
Bhavani puts on his reading glasses, tears open the envelope, scans its contents, and smiles the beatific smile of a lost child who has just found his mother again, and she is holding a packet of Lays Magic Masala chips in one hand and a Cadbury Silk in the other. As an exultant glow suffuses his square brown face, two young nurses on a tea break whisper, ‘George Clooney’ to each other, giggle and scamper away.
Entirely oblivious to this little by-play, Bhavani tells Padam, ‘Good man! Now we know who the murderer is.’
‘That’s excellent, sir.’ The young policeman doesn’t try very hard to
disguise his disbelief.
Bhavani looks up from the report for one keen moment. ‘Don’t believe me?’
Padam’s face reddens slightly. ‘Is he dead, sir? Aggarwal? What are the doctors saying?’
‘Ah.’ Bhavani gives a quick little nod. ‘He’s weak but he’ll live.’
‘Was it … attempted murder, sir?’
‘All in good time, PK!’ Bhavani smiles. ‘Send all our guests into Suite 3. Wait inside, with the rest of the team positioned just outside. And keep your handcuffs ready. When we leave from here, we will be taking a murderer with us.’
He hurries away, moving as buoyantly as a sixteen-year-old.
The Khuranas, husband and wife.
Bambi Todi.
Fr Victor Emmanuel and Randy Rax.
Ganga Kumar.
Kashi Dogra.
Cookie Katoch.
Roshni Aggarwal.
And on the hospital bed, weak, but well on his way to recovery, Aryaman Aggarwal.
‘Hai hai, it was all so goose-pimply, babe,’ Cookie Katoch tells her girlfriends breathlessly over lunch at Olive the next day. ‘Matlab, the décor in that hospital is better than Leela ka presidential suite, but there was also this total, rongta-raising, climax-wala atmosphere. And I toh was waise hi feeling SO much guilt, ki Roshni will hate me for telling the ACP about Arya’s fight with that wretched Ajay Kumar … Wohi jo dead ki jagah alive nikla! That is why I rushed to the hospital to suck up to her as soon as I got the news! I thought the horrid boy had OD’d because of me and my big mouth only! But then the whole story turned out to be quite different.
‘Anyway, he was out of danger by the time I got there – lying on the bed and sighing like a Devdas, with a whole mehfil around him! I found out later that some of them had showed up like that only, and some had been summoned by the ACP. Rosh looked like she’d been snorting some of her son’s maal, her eyes glittered so strangely. And her skin was so stretched over her face – if she does any more facelifts she’ll get stretch marks on her face, I tell you! Mukki’s eyes were darting everywhere, like a cornered chuha’s, and he’d worn those wretched yellow suspenders again, this time over a black shirt! He looked like a taxicab you don’t want to take. And Urvashi, dressed in white chikan mulmul, looking like Benazir Bhutto about to be assassinated! And Bambi Todi, so sweet, and Balbir Dogra’s son, so cute, and my God, there was so much tension in the room!
Club You to Death Page 29
