‘Why?’ asked Deepika to the pathetic man in the maroon turban. They were seated on a rickety wooden bench near Hauz Khas Lake. There was no unprocessed anger in her question. Just naked sorrow.
In the past fortnight, despite the third harrowing loss that had battered her young life, Deepika had appeared placid. In reality, she was churning up inside like a hurricane.
On the day that Sumi had passed away, Jasmine had collected all the orphans in the hall and broken the news matter-of-factly. ‘She was very sick and died in the hospital,’ was what was told. There was sadness all around in the group, but not many questions. Death was not an unfamiliar commodity for these children—after all, everyone had seen it up close, personal and dirty in their lives. Later, Jasmine had taken Deepika aside and had given her a bit more detail on how there had been ‘complications’ in the procedure for ‘appendicitis’. ‘The doctors tried very hard,’ she had assured.
‘She doesn’t know! She really doesn’t know that I know the truth about Sumi and her bloody husband!’ Deepika thought, bewildered. ‘Which means that Sumi didn’t tell this bitch that I knew she was pregnant! She must have done it to protect me.’
Obviously, there was no need to correct Jasmine’s misperception, Deepika felt, so she played along.
‘I understand, Didi. I hope there was not much pain when she died. Poor Sumi! She had been complaining about stomach ache for the past few days,’ she said, sounding as grown up as possible.
Each passing day after Jasmine’s deceitful announcement pushed Deepika deeper into an abyss of rage and angst. She was convinced that there had been foul play in Sumi’s death. She needed answers, fast, for she feared that her friend’s demise was about to subsume her own sanity completely. She lost her appetite, her ability to function and her focus at school. But, perhaps most crucially, she felt bereft of any emotion or responsibility towards her fellow brothers and sisters, the parental role that Sumi had once embraced with fervour as their oldest sibling and that had now passed on to Deepika as a matter of natural progression.
It was clear that the answers to all her questions lay with Jolly. Deepika needed to dig that rat out of his hiding place and confront him. After skipping school one day to sleuth around the lanes of Green Park colony, Deepika finally managed to locate Jolly. When Jolly eventually spotted her standing outside his restaurant’s entrance that morning, he was momentarily shocked but recovered quickly.
Deepika was surprised by the man’s reaction when they were face-to-face. He looked shocked, of course. But that emotion had immediately transformed to resignation. Or was it relief? Whatever it was, it had blunted the potency of all the venom that she had come prepared to spew at him.
As the two sat together on that wooden bench by Hauz Khas Lake, Deepika realised that the only thing that she really needed to know was—Why. Why had Jolly extracted such a colossal price from a girl whose only mistake had been falling in love, inexplicable as it was, with him. Because nothing, no amount of yelling or cursing or crying or hurting was going to bring Sumi back to life again.
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why did you let her do this?’
The Bhatias had been married for about ten years. Jasmine was a very attractive woman when they had first met, several notches higher in league than the ordinary-looking Sardar whose style statement was limited to a maroon turban. At the time, Jasmine was freelancing as a Business Development Executive who worked on commission with several NGOs. Her job was to urge corporations and accomplished people to ‘open their hearts’ —mainly wallets—to ‘society’s underprivileged’. Her first meeting with Jolly was one such business call and awestruck by the pretty and flirtatious young woman’s charms, the single man had donated generously. Soon, they were seeing more of each other. Two months later, they were talking of marriage. And four months since the man had cut his first cheque for HelpAge India, Jasmine and Jolly were married.
Jolly had often wondered why a woman like Jasmine, who could have had a horde of handsome and successful men at her feet, had fallen for a man like him. Wondered, yes, but not felt compelled enough to confront that niggling apprehension before marriage. But that cloud started to part and reveal the truth about her soon enough.
Joginder Singh Bhatia had lost his father when he was barely nineteen and still in college. His father’s unexpected death forced him to abandon his studies in order to provide for himself and his mother. Luckily, Papaji had bequeathed his son a tidy sum of money which Jolly decided to use as seed money to start a small business of his own. His business decision proved wise and in just a few years, he was running a successful catering company that serviced the commercial hubs in South Delhi. The stupendous rise of the Affluent Delhiite in the 1990s and 2000s combined with Jolly’s own hard work meant that his food business went from strength to strength.
Jolly’s twenty-fifth year had been very eventful. He lost his mother to a bout of meningitis that year. A few months later, he met Jasmine. It didn’t take much for the Sardar boy to fall hard for the pretty Punjabi lass. Soon after, he found himself in a position to buy his first fast food eatery in Green Park, and his business instantly went into high gear. It brought him stability and the kind of wealth he had not had before. It was only logical that he would ask for Jasmine’s hand in marriage.
To the outside world, the Bhatias had a dream marriage—a successful businessman husband, a beautiful wife, oodles of cash, a big house, zero interference from family on his side, and just a long-distance mother on hers. In reality, the charismatic Jasmine of their courtship days disappeared in a poof of smoke soon after the marriage rituals had been completed. It was instantly clear to Jolly—once single, lustful and unattached—that he had been checkmated by a calculating woman who had married him only for his wealth and position.
In fact, it had been a chess game where the King had allowed himself to be checkmated by his own Queen.
The loveless marriage was soon resting comatose on the shallow bed of lies and deceit, orchestrated by Jasmine’s only real friend and guru—her mother—who played her daughter’s life like a Russian chess grandmaster, even if it was long distance over the phone. Jolly noticed frequently how all the pawns on their chessboard appeared to be constantly stacked in favour of Jasmine’s wishes and desires—never his.
A couple of years later, Jasmine, now a bored housewife and socialite, decided that she needed more adventure in her life. So, she decided she was going to have a baby! No, not one made of flesh and bones, conceived with Jolly. Hers was going to be one that gave her big profits and yet demanded little attention. And she was capable of conceiving it all by herself, based on a lifetime of professional experience.
That is how Jasmine’s NGO, Innocent Dreams, was born.
Just like its mother, Innocent Dreams also flourished in the shiny promises of care and affection displayed to its corporate and government sponsors, but where the inside reality was more threadbare than the tent-house carpets at a poor man’s wedding.
Once Jasmine jumped into her new ‘motherhood’ headlong, it confirmed the death of the marriage that Jolly had entered into with the best of intentions. Divorce was out of the question because it would never have been simple. So, in the end, Jolly decided to bear the corpse of ‘The Bhatias’ by himself, and for as long as he could possibly survive it. The task didn’t seem so onerous when he considered it a matter of just one lifetime. ‘I will be wiser in my next life,’ he told himself reassuringly. With that, the fatalist man flung himself into his business and made it flourish even more.
Then, one day, out of the blue, karma came calling. Jolly met a young woman named Sumi. It made him want to have his life back.
‘I loved Sumi with all my heart,’ the broken man said to Deepika, as she heard out his life story. ‘But in the end, that was not enough to save her.’
‘It didn’t have to end this way…’ she said.
Jolly looked at Deepika. Just a few months ago when he had first met her, she was simply on
e in Jasmine’s brood of orphans to him. He had been dismissive of her, curt even, thinking of her as a whiny, pesky kid. But today, he was finally noticing Deepika for what she really was. A young woman with a maturity far beyond her age. ‘How quickly they grow up…’ he thought sadly. When a child has no adult left in her life anymore, she must assume that role herself. After all, death takes a bigger toll on the ones it leaves behind.
Jolly closed his eyes and let out a sigh. When he spoke again, his words were barely louder than a whisper.
‘I told Jasmine the whole story about Sumi and me and urged her to return from Darjeeling. She took it very well. For once, I did not feel anything amiss in her acceptance. I felt she had finally found her own compelling reason to believe that she and I had to go our separate ways. That we could finally get a divorce.’
‘What happened then?’
‘She warned me that Sumi’s pregnancy was going to make everything complicated. Sumi was too young to deal with it. There could even be legal complications. I was sorry that the pregnancy had happened in the first place. I had been very careful,’ he sounded embarrassed.
‘So, Jasmine offered to convince Sumi to abort the baby?’ Deepika pressed.
‘Jasmine said she was going to talk to her about it. You know, woman to woman. She felt it was a highly traumatic subject for Sumi, given her past.’
Deepika nodded, though still not quite convinced. ‘I don’t believe Sumi wanted an abortion,’ she said. ‘It was your baby. And she loved you. But somehow, she got convinced she needed to abort it to save your reputation. She didn’t care about her own past!’
Jolly winced in pain.
‘You should have spoken with Sumi yourself. She kept waiting to hear from you that day!’
‘I did speak with her on the phone that evening. After she and Jasmine had had their… talk.’
‘You did? What did she say?’
‘She sounded… she sounded ready.’
‘She was lying, then. She may have sounded ready only because she was convinced she was doing the right thing for you!’
The two sat in silence for a little while sharing each other’s despondency.
‘Then what happened?’ Deepika resumed after a few minutes.
The man turned his face to look at her. She noticed his moist eyes.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
‘How did she…’ she said, unable to complete the sentence.
‘Die?’
Deepika nodded and then looked away, unable to match the sad man’s stare. He breathed deeply before continuing—
‘They took the… baby out, but there was all this bleeding…it wouldn’t stop,’ he spoke quite matter-of-factly.
‘But isn’t it supposed to be very routine? Abortion, I mean?’
‘It usually is. But it wasn’t in her case. There had been a lot of damage to her internals the last time…’
‘The last time? You mean, the last time she had had an abortion? Six years ago?’
‘Yes.’
‘But the doctors must have known that hers was a complicated case! Wouldn’t they have been more prepared, given her history?’ Deepika asked with rising perturbation.
‘They would have, if…’ the man replied.
‘If someone had only told them about Sumi’s history,’ she said, completing Jolly’s sentence. ‘Jasmine was the one who had made Sumi abort her last baby.’
The man nodded.
‘Sumi had told me once how it had taken her months to get better after that operation. Jasmine must have known that too.’ Deepika’s anger was rising, and so was her voice. ‘Jasmine must not have revealed any of that information to the doctors!’ she said.
The two looked at each other intently, as the cruel truth dawned upon them at the same moment.
‘And she didn’t because she wanted Sumi to…’ whispered Deepika.
The jigsaw of Sumi’s unexplained death had been pieced together. And it had left the two people closest to her incensed. So visceral was the anger that they could have extinguished Jasmine with their own bare hands had she been standing in front of them. Deepika realised she was trembling with hate. It took her and Jolly almost fifteen minutes to steady their nerves and turn their collective mind to their response to Jasmine’s perfect crime.
Retribution.
‘We need to think about this carefully,’ said Deepika, as the fog created by thoughts of instant justice started to dissipate in her head, making way for a clearer vision of the task ahead.
Jolly nodded in agreement.
‘That means you can’t be involved in whatever we do next in any way,’ she added.
‘What do you mean?’ Jolly responded sharply.
‘Say, a married woman dies an unnatural death, who do you think comes under suspicion first?’ she asked.
‘Her hus…’ he mumbled, slowly shaking his head.
‘So, what do we do? Hand her over to the police?’ she asks.
‘No!’ he exclaimed. ‘She will find a way to go scot-free. I have to take care of this somehow.’
‘Look, we have to do something quickly—but not be rash about it.’
‘Yes,’ he spat. ‘Who knows, she might just run off to Darjeeling again!’ he said with intense anger.
Deepika paused at Jolly’s mention of Darjeeling. There was something about that part of Jasmine’s story that had been pricking at her for a while. Something about it still didn’t make sense.
‘Why was Jasmine in Darjeeling for so long?’ she asked finally. ‘And don’t say it was jaundice!’
Deepika’s comment made him laugh quite suddenly. But it wasn’t mirthful. It was loud, angry, sad and hopeless all at the same time. When he stopped, she noticed that Jolly’s eyes were flaming red. But he said nothing, and that made her even more curious to know the truth.
‘What did you mean when you said earlier that you thought Jasmine was going to be agreeable to a divorce this time? Had you not asked for a divorce from her earlier? After all, she had never been good to you from the very beginning!’
Deepika could sense that the mention of Darjeeling had reignited Jolly’s rage against his wife. She allowed him several minutes to calm down and explain.
‘Getting a divorce was going to be a… well, a complication for both of us, so I never considered it earlier,’ Jolly spoke finally. ‘But when I found love with Sumi, I was genuinely hopeful that Jasmine had also found hers thousands of miles away, tucked away in the mountains. That was supposed to make it easy for us to finally part ways. After all, she couldn’t have got what she wanted from me, but hey, everyone has someone special made especially for them by the Gods above, right? Even for a snake like her?’ he said, the last sentence doused with unvarnished hate.
‘You mean she has a lover in Darjeeling?’ Deepika went absolutely wide-eyed.
‘Yes, even that… that monster has a lover!’
‘So why didn’t she just leave you and go away?’
‘Because she can never do that! That bitch of a mother of hers will never allow her to. After all, what will society say?’
‘In this day and age, they are worried about all that? If it’s just money she and her mother want…’ Deepika said.
‘It’s not about the money,’ Jolly interrupted her resentfully. ‘It was never about the damn money!’
‘Is there something wrong with that guy? Jasmine’s lover, I mean?’
‘Well, what’s wrong with my wife’s lover is that he, is a she.’
Deepika stared at the man.
‘My wife is a lesbian! She only likes to fu...’ he paused for a brief second. ‘She has always only liked women!’
4
You Should Meet This Girl
Six years ago
Rubina Peter hated Jazmeen. But that hadn’t always been the case. When she had first made the acquaintance of the luscious young woman, she had found her quite intriguing.
‘Excuse me, but don’t you work at Hair and There Beauty
Parlour?’ were Jazmeen’s first-ever words to her. It was a lovely, breezy Tuesday evening. Rubina had the day off and she had decided to spend it sensibly by checking out shoes at the street bazaar on Bandra Linking Road.
‘Yes?’ Rubina answered, the shrillness of her nasal voice sounding almost pleasant amid the din of the heavy traffic around them.
‘I have been meaning to get in touch with you ever since I came to Mumbai,’ said Jazmeen.
‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Jazmeen,’ the girl with the big breasts said, thrusting her right hand towards Rubina, who took it a bit unsurely.
‘I am Rubina. How do you know that I work at Hair and There? I don’t think I have seen you before. Are you a customer?’
‘No.’
‘Then?’
‘Is there somewhere we can sit and talk? I have a proposition for you. It’s about your boss, Leena Bindra.’
‘Leena Aunty?’
‘Well, we don’t need to call her Aunty between the two of us. We both know that she hardly deserves that kind of respect!’
Rubina Peter’s curiousity was immediately piqued. The women decided to buy a meal from Jai Jawan dhaba and park themselves on a nearby bench. They talked for over half an hour. When Rubina had finished hearing what the girl had to say, she picked up her phone and dialled Toby’s number.
‘I just met this girl who has a very interesting proposition for us. I think you should meet her,’ she said when the gruff voice came up on the other end of the line.
Tobias ‘Toby’ James had been conceived atop an empty redhi cart near Dhobi Talao in what was then called Bombay. His father was an acne-pocked child of seventeen, tall and scrawny, with a two-inch gash above his upper lip. His name was Mohammad Yunus Abadi. Yunus had recently shifted from Bhopal to pursue medicine at the prestigious Seth Gordhandas Sunderdas Medical College. His burning ambition in life was to be a surgeon like his father, mother, brothers, sister, uncles and cousins—and join the ‘family business’, so to speak. He was also virtuous, virginal and upright in thought and deeds. Until, of course, the wild, wild ways of bedazzling Bombay wrenched away his usual self-control.
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