Banquet on the Dead

by Sharath Komarraju

  ‘Are you listening?’ said Kamala. For years now, wife and husband had come to agree upon that question as a conversation starter.

  So Venkataramana said, ‘Hmm?’ without looking up from the papers.

  Kamala’s fingers did not stop while she spoke. She said, ‘Have you talked to Swami saab about the old woman’s will? The plot near Vijaya Talkies ought to be ours by right. Did you tell him that?’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Venkataramana, and adjusted his glasses so he could read the print better.

  ‘If you continue to be like this, brother and sister will put in your hands the worthless land in Pegadapalli and keep the Vijaya Talkies plots for themselves. Did you ask them who is going to keep this house?’

  ‘Hmm.’ He scrawled something on the paper and scowled at it again.

  ‘Are you listening?’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Koteshwar Rao and his family have come and settled down in this house. Who is going to drive them out? You? I won’t stand for their getting a single part of the old woman’s wealth. As if it isn’t enough with the three of you, now we have Prameelamma clawing for a share, and as if that is not enough we have Kotesh as well.’ She popped a few grains into her mouth and chewed intensely. ‘Are you listening?’ Her eyes darted between the television and her husband.

  ‘Hmm,’ Venkataramana said, and started folding the sheets of paper.

  ‘And then there is Karuna. Wherever there is money being divided, she is there, shameless woman. She doesn’t even have any right to Prameelamma’s property, let alone the old woman’s. And yet here she is, striving away in the kitchen—anyone who looks at her now would think she loves all of us with all her heart. I wonder how much Swami saab is going to give her.’ Then, after another bout of chewing, she said: ‘Are you listening?’

  Venkataramana put the papers away, folded his glasses into his shirt-pocket, and said, ‘Kamala, I know you did not like my mother. But can we not wait until the tenth day is finished before we bring up matters of property?’

  ‘There you go. I am just asking you to be careful and you’re telling me to shut up.’

  ‘I am not telling you to shut up,’ he said patiently. ‘But there is a time and place for everything. Now is not the time. Let’s wait till the function is finished on the tenth day—it is no more than a week away—and then we can talk about this.’

  ‘By then all the decisions will have been made and you will be left with nothing.’

  Venkataramana smiled at his wife. ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘Because Prameelamma and Karuna are already here, spinning their webs around Swami and Raja. They’re already forming a group, and we’re being excluded. Don’t you see? You and I and Lakshman and Praveen—’

  ‘Nobody,’ Venkataramana said, raising his voice just enough to subdue his wife’s, ‘nobody can influence Mother’s will. It is made, and no matter what ploy Karuna comes up with, she cannot change a made will.’

  ‘That is what you think,’ said Kamala. ‘These people are charlatans. These people—’

  ‘These people,’ said Venkataramana, ‘are my family’.

  ‘They’re not the only family you have! What about Lakshman and Praveen? What about Narmada? She’s— she’s pregnant now. What about the unborn baby? Are we all not your family as well? Do you not have a responsibility to us as well?’

  ‘Lakshman and Praveen ought to look after themselves.’

  ‘Ought to, ought to, ought to! You and your “ought to”. Some things—many things—are not as they ought to be. Lakshman doesn’t have a job.’

  ‘Is that my fault now, Kamala?’

  ‘I don’t want to argue about whose fault it is. It is your duty as a father to provide your sons with a livelihood.’

  Venkataramana pointed at the bundle of papers on the table. ‘Here is my livelihood. This is what I have earned. They’re welcome to take a share in this.’

  She leered at it. ‘Agricultural land! Peanuts!’

  ‘That is where that rice you’re eating comes from, Kamala. Don’t forget that.’

  ‘Yes, yes, when other people’s lands are yielding money, you spend your whole life growing rice in your land. And you proclaim that as an achievement!’

  ‘Agriculture is no easy business, Kamala. You know how tough it has been these last few months. Even now we’re not out of the rut—’

  ‘That’s why!’ Kamala sat forward eagerly. ‘Lakshman needs money, very badly. He has been asking me for my gold. God knows what he has done now. Praveen needs money to set up his practice. You need money too; you admitted it just now yourself. The old woman has died at just the right time—’

  Venkataramana silenced her with a glance. Then he said, ‘You could not respect her in life. At least do so in death.’

  She lowered her head in silent shame for a while. But then she raised it again, saying in a low voice, ‘I did not mean it like that—I am not glad that she’s dead. But you have to admit that the death did happen at the right time for us...’

  The lines on Venkataramana’s face softened. He nodded slowly.

  ‘And now these two men have come—’

  ‘What two men?’ he asked, frowning.

  ‘One of them is the policeman—the man who came on the day after we found the body. Now he has an old, lame Muslim man with him; must be his assistant or something. I saw them walk toward the well just before, and they were talking to Ellayya...’

  Venkataramana said, ‘Let them. They won’t find anything.’

  She hesitated for a moment. ‘You know,’ she said in a low voice, ‘I am scared’.

  ‘Scared for what?’

  ‘You know, Lakshman...’

  Venkataramana sighed and rubbed his eyes.

  ‘You know what he is like—you know what horrible things he says when he’s angry. You remember what he said that day...’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Venkataramana hastily.

  ‘You—you don’t think—’

  Venkataramana shook his head to stop her from speaking further. Then he shook it again, with more force and more passion. But when he looked up at her his gaze was still uncertain, still vague. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know.’

  She looked at the television, her eyes vacant, as though the sounds no longer reached her. ‘I am scared,’ she murmured. ‘Scared for all of us.’

  Seated in the wicker chair of his first-floor office, Praveen blew the dust off the top of an old ledger and opened it. He turned to face away from the dust particles, and in so doing, his eyes caught the marble bust of Raj Kapoor that sat behind the glass panes on the shelf. He stopped to look upon it for a minute, and sighed. Soon he might have to sell this too, this most prized of all his possessions. If his practice continued to be so dull, he might even have to agree to what his father had suggested, and look after the land in Puthoor. But that would mean he had accepted defeat. He pulled his gaze away from the shelf and to the book in front of him. For a while the numbers kept him from drifting away into his thoughts; but only for a while...

  I could go to Mumbai, he thought, now that Grandmother is no more—and even as he thought that, he felt a tug on his heart—that he had come to wish death upon her in some of his wilder moments, that he had been so unkind to her—to her who had been nothing but the most loving of maternal beings, to him and to the entire family. He looked down at the curling dark hair on his forearms and thought: Yes, I could go to Bombay now. I am not that old. I could still find something there—if not in the movies, maybe on the stage—but even that thought was not comforting to him. There had been a time when the thought of being an actor) had his blood racing; when a mere mention of Mumbai or of the Film Institute in Pune would make him grin stupidly and float him along into a land of fantasy and colours; but now, after a mere two years of what Grandmother had termed ‘earning his keep’, he had seemingly lost interest.

  No, he thought, and at that one word he felt rebellion rise within him. He had not lost all
interest. Maybe the day-to-day drudgery of coming here to this office every day and peering over sections and torts and loopholes had somewhat dulled his sensitivity to the arts; but he would not—never!—lose his love completely. Yes, maybe he could go to Mumbai and try his luck; maybe after the dust had settled on Grandmother—and again he felt a rage within him—why did he always think of her in such bad terms? Had he really hated her so much?

  He heard steps on the stairs and signalled his boy to open the door. Praveen had heard it said that there were too many lawyers and too few clients in Warangal. Apparently, the ratio was better in Hyderabad. Maybe he could go to Hyderabad and set up an office there, earn some money, and then maybe he could go to the Institute and try his luck. Now that Grandmother wasn’t there... he stopped that thought.

  The boy had gone out and was looking down the flight of stairs. He smiled and saluted the visitor. Someone he knew, then. He raised his eyebrows at him.

  ‘Lakshman babu,’ the boy said to him.

  The next minute Lakshman walked in through the door and wiped his face and neck with his handkerchief. Blotches of sweat showed through his shirt. It wasn’t a particularly hot day, but it didn’t have to be for Lakshman to sweat. He looked up, sighing, at the fan, as he walked to the table and sat himself down. Praveen saw that his beard was also glistening. It would be a while yet before he dried completely.

  ‘Cold drink?’

  ‘No, no, just turn the fan up.’

  Praveen gestured to the boy. Then he turned to his brother and asked, ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘There are people at the house,’ said Lakshman, and wiped his face again. ‘People who are apparently asking questions.’

  ‘Questions—about what?’

  ‘About Grandmother.’

  Praveen closed the book in front of him and frowned. ‘What about her?’

  ‘Well, they are asking why a woman so old had to go to the well in the first place. Especially if she was so afraid of water.’

  Praveen said, ‘That is something all of us are asking, isn’t it?’

  Lakshman turned to the boy and said, ‘Babu, go and get us two goli-sodas.’ And after he had gone, he leant in closer and said, ‘I came here so I could talk to you in private. Too many people about the damned house.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If there is anything that you would like to tell me—anything at all, that you would like to—confess—to me—’

  ‘What would I confess to you?’

  Lakshman said, ‘I am your brother. You can tell me anything.’

  Praveen closed his eyes and said in a deliberately calm voice, ‘Brother, will you please tell me what you are getting at?’

  ‘Well, do you happen to know why Ammamma went to the well?’

  ‘I do not!’

  ‘So you had nothing to do with—er, her falling over?’

  Praveen stared incredulously at his brother for a long minute. ‘How dare you?’ he asked, finally, his voice starting low but rising. ‘How dare you!’

  Lakshman looked genuinely confused. ‘I thought you—I heard—’

  Praveen slammed his palms on the table and got up. ‘What about you, brother! Shall I ask you now if you killed Ammamma? God knows you had more reason than I did to kill her!’

  Lakshman only frowned, as though he was debating within himself on the merit of what Praveen had said. Then he answered, ‘Maybe. But I did not kill her. I was inside the house when she fell into the well.’

  ‘And I was here, in my office. Can anybody confirm your statement, that you were in the house?’

  ‘Mother can,’ said Lakshman slowly.

  ‘Ha! Yes, a mother’s support to a son’s alibi. How convincing!’

  ‘Hey, listen, I came here to support you if—’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Brother! What makes you think I need your support? You thought I killed her and you came to offer me support? What kind of a brother are you?’

  Lakshman’s face, still beaded with sweat, now contorted with anger of its own. He rose as if to strike his younger brother, but restrained himself. ‘You—you—everyone in the house is saying that you killed her, you understand! And I come to you here—in this godforsaken place—look at how I am sweating, you ungrateful pig! And you, you hurl abuses at me?’

  Praveen clutched the edges of the table to steady himself. His voice was subdued, confused. ‘They think I killed her?’

  ‘Of course they do! Can you blame them after the scene you created last week?’

  ‘Oh—oh—that—that—I did not mean what I said.’

  ‘Oh, come on, you meant it. Everybody who was there thought you meant it.’

  ‘I did not,’ said Praveen. ‘I did not.’ Then he let go of the table and his hands went to his hair. He threw his head back to look at the ceiling, and yelled, ‘I did not!’

  ‘Look, if you’ve not done it, all’s well. I just wanted to make sure—’

  ‘I have not done it.’

  ‘Sit down, Brother,’ Lakshman said.

  Praveen collapsed on the chair.

  ‘Now, tell me again, did you or did you not do it?’

  ‘I did not,’ Praveen said weakly.

  ‘Can you swear to me that you didn’t?’

  Praveen’s eyes moved to pin down his brother. Both of them now were drenched in sweat. Above them the fan rotated furiously, creaking and scraping as it did so.

  The door opened and the boy walked in, his hands full. ‘Two goli-sodas,’ he said.

  7

  PRAMEELAMMA WAS A white-haired woman of five-foot-one—about the same height as Kauvery’s. She walked with no visible discomfort, yet from within the folds of her sari Nagarajan spotted a brown belt fastened around the waist. She had flawless, fair skin; the same shade as her daughter’s, Nagarajan noticed, but it did not glow as much as the younger woman’s. She nodded her thanks to the constable in the doorway as she passed, and took the chair across the table.

  ‘First of all, madam,’ Nagarajan started smoothly, ‘I am very sorry for your loss’. The lady’s eyes did not look like they’d been shedding a lot of tears. Come to think of it, Nagarajan reflected, none of the three members of the family they’d met so far had shown any outward signs of grief. The servant had been the only one stricken. Of course, that was neither here nor there—every person had their own way of grieving, and some showed it more than others—but Nagarajan had expected to see some darkening around the eyes of the murdered woman’s daughter, if not anyone else’s.

  She did not look at them directly. Her hands twisted around each other, and her eyes—clear and focussed— were set on the edge of the table-top. She murmured something in response.

  ‘We will try to make this as free of pain as possible for you, madam,’ Nagarajan said. ‘We’re back here again because your son asked us to come.’

  She raised her eyebrows and gave them a half-nod.

  ‘Now, we’re not sure yet, of course, that it was not an accident, but we’d like to—’

  ‘It was not an accident,’ she said in a flat, emotionless tone. Then she raised her glance to meet his fully. ‘It was not an accident, Inspector. I know it was not.’

  Nagarajan heard Hamid Pasha beside him stir with interest and settle back in his chair with a soft chuckle. He waited for the lady to speak, and she looked for a moment as if she had something to say, but then she fell into silence.

  Nagarajan asked, ‘What makes you so sure, madam?’

  ‘I know my mother.’ Her voice was also that of her daughter, he thought. It was mellower, and it did not contain the same shrill notes of excitement that the younger woman’s had, but it was made of the same stuff. Prameelamma had a stern, commanding voice—the sort of voice one would expect in a woman who had raised five children virtually on her own.

  ‘I know my mother,’ she repeated. ‘She was terrified of water—all kinds of water! It was a great mystery to me how she bathed every day, sir. She was that scared. Wild horses would not
have been able to drag her to the well.’

  ‘And yet somebody did, behen,’ Hamid Pasha said softly.

  She looked at him, as if his presence had registered with her for the first time. ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Someone—or some thing—did make her want to go to the well. But even if she did, bhaisaab, she would not have gone close to the well. She would have had to be pushed in.’ And then Nagarajan heard the catch in the throat, the quick quiver of the lip, but these only lasted a fraction of a second. She was back in control almost immediately. ‘Someone pushed her in. I have no doubt about that.’

  ‘But you hesitate, madam,’ said Nagarajan. ‘Do you not share your son’s wish to have the murderer caught, assuming this is a murder?’

  She gave him a smile, and it seemed to Nagarajan there was sadness in it. ‘What is the point, Inspector? She was a lady nearing eighty. Her grandsons and granddaughters have children now. She lived a full life.’

  Again, Hamid Pasha stirred. ‘Behen, are you not angry that your mother was killed this way, in cold blood?’

  ‘Angry, bhaisaab? What will anger resolve? I lost my daughter when I was twenty-five. My husband died when I was forty. All my other sons have had close shaves with death. My grandson almost died in the same well. Whom should I get angry at? How can you be angry at something that has no face?’

  Nagarajan saw the colour rise in her cheeks, and the eyes shine. This may be a woman ravaged and beaten by time, he thought, but there was still a lot of passion within her.

  Hamid Pasha said, ‘But this murderer has a face, behen.’

  ‘We have had such deaths before,’ she said dismissively. ‘This was not the first, and I doubt it will be the last.’

  ‘So you don’t want us to carry on further, hain?’

  She smiled at him. ‘If I say “no”, will you stop?’

  Hamid Pasha shook his head grimly. ‘No, madam. Allah alone has the right to take lives. When humans assume that right, Hamid Pasha will intervene.’

  ‘Maybe it is Allah’s will that my mother should die in the well, bhaisaab. How can anyone of us—even you— profess to know what He wills?’