Banquet on the Dead

by Sharath Komarraju

  Nagarajan waved a salute at the traffic constable—what was his name? Naresh? Suresh? Nagesh?—on the Chowrastha, and the pain returned when he lifted his right arm to do so. He started to wince, and caught himself halfway. (‘It’s not really there, Mr Nagarajan. Just your mind playing tricks.’) With tightened lips he turned into Tailors’ Street, dodging the stream of two-wheelers heading that way from Vijaya Talkies Road. Naresh had just opened the India-Pakistan border, Nagarajan thought with a half-smile, looking over his shoulder and cutting off in front of a lumbering grey Ambassador into the small lane that went straight to the big sewer.

  The Big Sewer was Hanamkonda’s most prominent landmark bar none. You might live in Hanamkonda and meet people who’d never been to Vijaya Talkies, who might look askance at you if you mentioned Kakatiya University, even those who shook their heads when asked directions to the Thousand-Pillared Temple, but mention Big Sewer and the reply would come out in a trice. Hanamkonda built itself around the Big Sewer. There was a theory—not a far-fetched one—that the Chowrastha was where it was because of its proximity to the Big Sewer.

  Such an important landmark, and what was its distinguishing feature? Mosquitoes. The Sewer was ‘completely covered’ according to the local municipal officers, but somehow mosquitoes the size of bees freely held court at all times of the day. Particularly at this time, just after sunset, just as the lights of the city were coming on, they would be out in their droves, buzzing for blood. If you lived by the Big Sewer, you didn’t open the windows of your house in the evenings unless you wanted to be eaten alive.

  More than anything, it was that characteristic ear-piercing buzz of mosquitoes in flight that told Nagarajan that he was at the Big Sewer. Almost from memory he turned into the second left, dodging a goat and calling out to the skinny kid in front of him—who from every appearance was contemplating a jump across the road—to stay where he was.

  It was somewhere here, wasn’t it, that he had come last year? The air was exactly as it had been that night. The lights in the dwellings (these could not be called houses) were dim and flickering. Lizards prowled around the tubelights and snapped at insects. Most windows were closed. The few which were open had been tempered with mosquito meshes.

  There was no streetlight. He drove on best as he could, aided by just his headlight and the occasional beam from a house. The smell of fried mutton assaulted his nose from all sides. He gulped. For all his years in the department, he had not yet fallen so low as to eat meat. He had fallen to alcohol, yes, but not to meat. And as long as mutton held that horrible stench, he was in no danger of falling to it either.

  A little further on, he realised his head had started to throb. So there were reasons other than his natural social reticence, he thought dryly, that had kept him from visiting Hamid Pasha at his house for a year. He was beginning to see what they were.

  Somewhere here. Somewhere.

  And just as he parked his vehicle at the front steps of a single-bedroom house and looked around, he heard a voice that he recognised—low and hoarse, but tender.

  ‘Begum!’ the voice said, ‘you make the best mutton in the whole wide world, Mashallah.’

  And the begum said, ‘Haanji.’

  A throat cleared itself, and the voice began:

  Tamannaon ko zindaa, aarzuon ko javaan kar loon;

  Yeh sharmili nazar keh de to kuch gustaakhiyan kar loon?

  Shall I make my dreams alive, and my desires young;

  Shall I, with the consent of these shy glances, dare to be insolent?

  The begum giggled and said again, ‘Haanji.’

  Nagarajan got off the bike and stood it up. He had reached the place. He stood looking at the front door pensively for a few seconds, then with a quick decisive nod, ran up the stairs, took off his cap, and knocked.

  Nagarajan heard the commotion his knock had caused the little room that lay on the other side of the door. He could imagine what was going on. Hamid Pasha would have to scramble to get his shirt. The begum would put on her burkha and retire to the adjoining bedroom. Clothes had to be cleared off chairs. Dishes had to be carried to the kitchen. Hands had to be washed.

  This and much more Nagarajan could read into the series of sounds he heard. He waited patiently.

  Then he heard footsteps approaching the door. A mutter came to his hears: ‘Iss waqt kaun hai, bhai?’ The latch was lifted; the door opened. Nagarajan joined his hands in greeting at the man standing in the doorway.

  He had not changed much from last year. In fact, he had not changed much in the twenty or so years he had known him. The beard had greyed, and beneath the mullah-cap Nagarajan imagined the hairline had receded a bit, but the core of the man was still intact. The paunch was still generous. The big, bushy eyebrows showed no intention of thinning. The calm, self-assured expression on the face that he had begun to don ever since he went clean was still there. The dark lips were set in a tight smile. It was his eyes, though, that still visibly carried scars from his past. While the rest of his countenance suggested peace and tranquillity, his eyes were always sharp, always furtive, looking about, as if danger could spring at him from any corner.

  ‘I’ve come alone, Hamid bhai.’

  ‘Rajan miyan,’ he said, and there was only a subtle hint of acknowledgment in his voice. ‘How did you remember me at this time of the day? Come in, come in. Before the mosquitoes do.’

  As soon as Nagarajan went in and the door was closed, Hamid Pasha said, ‘Sit down, miyan.’

  The pain in Nagarajan’s head had intensified. Everything in the room appeared to be made of mutton, so all-pervading was the smell. He looked around. He saw no chair to sit on. There were clothes, books, slippers, bags, a table with a hookah perched on top, and various other miscellaneous items squeezed into every inch, but there was nowehere to sit.

  ‘Sit down, miyan, sit down,’ Hamid Pasha insisted. He deftly stepped around Nagarajan and scooped a pile of clothes in his arms and tossed them aside, revealing a chair. ‘Sit down, and tell me how you came to be here at this time of the day.’

  Nagarajan sat down. ‘Happy Id, Hamid bhai.’

  The older man smiled, genuinely now, revealing his orange teeth. He stepped towards Nagarajan (his limp was just as prominent now, Nagarajan noticed) and held him by the shoulders. ‘Allah aap ko khush rakhe, miyan,’ he said, and after he had pushed away another pile of clothes and taken the seat opposite Nagarajan’s, he said, ‘You look well, Rajan miyan. You look very well.’

  Nagarajan understood the meaning of that. He had been promoted around a year back, and the results of the jeep and air-conditioned office that he had been given were only too visible now—around his waist, in his cheeks, in his thighs; just about wherever one looked, really.

  ‘Khair, chhodo,’ said Hamid Pasha. ‘That is not important. You did not come here to merely wish me on Bakri Id, did you, miyan?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘It is a problem, eh?’

  Nagarajan nodded. ‘A small one.’

  ‘Small enough for me, eh?’

  Nagarajan couldn’t resist a smile. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Well, let us get to the important point, then. Who died?’

  ‘Kauveramma, the wife of Kakaji.’

  ‘Kakaji? Kakaji of Kakaji Colony?’

  Nagarajan nodded.

  Hamid Pasha closed his eyes and murmured a prayer in Urdu. ‘I am sorry, miyan, I have not been keeping in touch with happenings in the crime world.’

  ‘Yes, yes of course.’

  ‘How old was she?’

  ‘Nearing eighty, I’d say.’

  ‘Money?’

  ‘Oh yes, lots of it.’

  ‘Hmm. Sons?’

  ‘Three. Only one daughter. Two of the sons are unmarried.’

  ‘Acha? Why so?’

  ‘One of them’s a polio patient. He cannot walk.’

  ‘And the other?’

  Nagarajan paused. ‘I don’t know.’

  �
��No matter. I was merely curious.’ He reached for the hookah and pulled the pipe towards him. Chewing on the end of it, he asked thoughtfully, ‘What was she like, this lady? Elderly widows with money usually tend to be tyrants.’ He took a long, deep puff and inclined his head questioningly at Nagarajan, holding out the pipe toward him.

  Nagarajan shook his head at the pipe. ‘It’s hard to tell with this one,’ he said. ‘The servants like her.’

  ‘So you have talked to the servants, eh?’

  ‘To some of them. Servants are generally the best people to approach regarding people. They see everything, hear everything, and remember everything.’

  Hamid Pasha again gave him the tight-lipped smile and puffed.

  Nagarajan said, ‘If the servants like a person, it jolly well means that the person is all right.’

  ‘Not always, miyan. Some people are especially good at keeping their servants happy. Because they know, you see,’ and his eyes twinkled, ‘that there are people like you who would come enquiring about them to their servants’.

  ‘Well, either way, the servants say she was an angel. I haven’t talked to members of her family much about her, to be honest.’

  ‘Achha. Why?’

  ‘Well,’ Nagarajan said, shifting a bit in his seat, ‘it’s like this—’

  ‘You did not find it necessary?’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. I did not find it necessary. It seemed like an open-and-shut case. Everyone seemed to agree that it was an accident. It seemed superfluous to question all the family members.’

  ‘And now?’ Hamis Pasha asked. ‘What do you feel about it now?’

  ‘I—don’t know. The woman’s grandson thinks that it should be looked into a bit more deeply.’

  ‘Achha? And why does he think that?’

  ‘He’s a doctor, this fellow. He says the woman did not drown in the water. There was no water in the lungs. He says she hit the water as a corpse.’

  ‘So she fell into a well?’

  ‘Yes, sorry, I am saying this all back-to-front.’

  Hamid Pasha blew out a puff of smoke. ‘No, miyan. Say it just the way it comes to you. Very often we try to present information in a way we think other people will understand it better, but in the process we end up making it worse. You are doing just fine. Leave it to me to organise the pieces in their place.’ After a pause in which he carefully examined the rings of smoke that curled upwards, he said, ‘In a well, eh?’

  ‘Yes, it’s a family well—an open water one. He used to be a farmer in the old days, Kakaji. They used this well for irrigation.’ Nagarajan cleared his throat and tried his best not to cough. The room had now filled with a thin film of smoke. He wondered if he was more in danger outside at the mercy of the mosquitoes or in here at the mercy of Hamid Pasha’s hookah. He waved his hand in front of his eyes to clear the air.

  ‘So what do they use the well for now, miyan?’ Hamid Pasha asked at length. ‘I imagine there is no more agricultural land around the place?’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. There is none. There hasn’t been for a long time now. As far as I know they use the well for household needs. And as recreation, I suppose.’

  ‘Hain?’

  ‘Yes, the family is in the habit of swimming in the well. It’s a bit of a tradition, by the looks of it. The doctor has learnt swimming in that well, and now he has taught his son to swim in the same well. You know how it is.’

  ‘Acha. I imagine that tradition will stop now after what has happened.’

  ‘Yes,’ Nagarajan said. ‘I imagine it will.’

  ‘So what did the doctor say? He said the woman hit the water as a corpse?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But that is understandable, is it not? She was a woman of eighty. Say she toppled over by accident. Her heart would be very likely to stop out of fright by the time she hit the surface, would it not?’

  Nagarajan nodded. ‘That’s what I told him too. I told him that the case did not warrant looking into again. But he insisted that his grandmother had a very strong heart.’

  ‘But it is not a question of strong or weak, is it, miyan? It is a question of fright. I am scared of heights. If I am to fall off a building, I know for sure that I will hit the ground as a corpse.’ Hamid Pasha cast his pipe away, much to Nagarajan’s relief. Then he said, ‘Did the doctor say anything about the old woman’s attitude to water?’

  ‘You mean whether she could swim?’

  Hamid Pasha impassively considered Nagarajan for a moment. ‘Miyan,’ he said, ‘the woman sank. So she obviously could not swim. What I meant was whether the doctor told you that the woman was scared of water?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Nagarajan, ‘the woman was terrified of water. He explicitly mentioned it to me.’

  ‘That is interesting, is it not? On one hand that invalidates what the doctor was saying, because if she had a natural fear of water, her heart would have likely stopped before she hit the water—but that raises another point, does it not?’ Hamid Pasha massaged his neck and looked down at Nagarajan.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nagarajan. ‘If she was so scared of the water, why was she at the well in the first place?’

  ‘Shabhaash, miyan! Maybe she had a daily routine which took her to the well?’

  Nagarajan shook his head. ‘No, I asked him. She avoided the well like the plague. In all of his life, the doctor had not seen her come to the well even once.’

  Hamid Pasha sat forward in his chair. ‘Now that is interesting. I am starting to think there might be something to it, after all.’

  ‘I thought so too—dash it, I wish I could just close the damned case, but there might just be something to it.’

  ‘Yes,’ Hamid Pasha said, stroking his beard. ‘Let us go there tomorrow, shall we, miyan, and have a look around the house? If we meet any people willing to talk, we will talk to them, ask a few questions; poochne mein kya jaata hai?’ It doesn’t hurt to ask, does it?

  Nagarajan picked up his hat and stood up. ‘So I will see you at the station tomorrow? Let’s say, nine in the morning?’

  Hamid Pasha stood up too. ‘Zaroor, miyan. Khuda Hafeez.’ Go with God.

  ‘Namaste.’

  The door closed behind him, and as he set his hat on the head and inserted the key into his bike, he heard Hamid Pasha’s guttural voice behind him.

  Kyun hume maut ki paigaam diye jaate hain

  Yeh sazaa kam hai ke jiye jaate hain?

  Why do I get sent the message of death;

  When living is such a punishment in itself?

  3

  ‘A BIG HOUSE, this,’ Hamid Pasha remarked.

  They were sitting on the concrete ledge in the shade of the big neem tree opposite Kauvery Bhavan. It was a cloudless morning. The sun, faithful to its early-March duties, was beating down with purpose. Hamid Pasha spat out a mouthful of zarda into the dust and resumed his examination of the house.

  It was a double-storeyed white building situated a good thirty metres in from the gate. An old oak tree stood in the front right corner of the plot and spread its branches out, framing the house rather picturesquely when viewed front-on. Even from this distance the solidity of the large teak doors and ornate design on the windows were easily visible. A staircase to the first floor started at the right edge of the house and curled out of sight behind it.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, agreeing wholeheartedly with his initial assessment. ‘It is a big house.’

  ‘It’s a recent construction,’ said Nagarajan. ‘There used to be an open plot here up until four years ago. The family used to live in that tiled house over there before this was built.’ He pointed at the gate.

  ‘Shall we take a walk, miyan?’

  They got off the ledge and ambled across the road to the front gate. Hamid Pasha limped over to the still-new nameplate and fingered it gingerly. ‘It is never a good thing, is it, miyan, to name a house after a living person? It is the fastest way to kill them, it is! No? You do not believe me? Name me one person—just on
e—who has lived to a ripe old age after having a monument named after him. You cannot! Do you know why? They do not exist. If you ask me, why does one have to name buildings? And if you really have to, why not name it after a dead person? Mara hua kutta ko kaun maar sakta hai? Who can kill an already dead dog, hai na?’

  Nagarajan did not respond to the question. He pointed at the smaller building with a tiled roof to the left of the house. ‘That’s where the servants live.’

  ‘And that is where the family used to live until four years ago?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who all live here?’ Hamid Pasha asked, following Nagarajan who had begun to walk along the compound wall.

  ‘All of them. The old woman, her three sons, her daughter, and their respective sons and daughters.’

  ‘Hai Allah. Itne saare?’ So many?

  ‘Only the daughter’s eldest son and his family live here. She has two other sons and a daughter. They come and go.’

  The grey compound wall was smooth to the touch. It stood at a height of eight feet. At the top of the wall there were broken pieces of glass in different colours—mainly yellow and green—embedded into the concrete.

  ‘The well is situated just beyond this wall,’ Nagarajan said.

  ‘These people do not seem to like having visitors,’ said Hamid Pasha, looking up at the glass pieces.

  ‘Oh, they’re not that bad. Like all rich people, they think everyone wants a piece of them. If you ask me it’s just fear.’ He pointed at a small heap of sand and concrete that lay on the path. ‘They were getting it repaired here, I think. This is where the contractor’s son heard the woman as she fell over.’