Banquet on the Dead

by Sharath Komarraju

  ‘Oh, if it is not Kamala, who would it be?’ Venkataramana asked. ‘None of us would do it—she was our mother. And I doubt anyone from the next generation would do it—what do they stand to gain from her death?’

  ‘But you said yourself that Lakshman—’

  ‘Oh yes, it could definitely have been Lakshman, but even if it is Lakshman who did it, it would have been Kamala—er—pulling the strings, you know.’

  ‘So you have no evidence, then.’

  Venkataramana thought for a moment and then said, ‘No evidence in this case, no.’

  Hamid Pasha asked suddenly, ‘What do you mean by that, miyan? If you do not have evidence in this case, you have evidence of previous cases?’

  Sighing deeply, Venkataramana said, ‘There have been—er—incidents—in the past, sir.’

  ‘Poisoning, by any chance?’

  ‘Yes, and with Kotesh looking after Mother—it is a bit hard to deceive a doctor with poison, you know.’

  ‘Ah, I understand that. Yes, I understand that,’ Hamid Pasha said. ‘But how did the doctor know who it was that poisoned the food?’

  ‘There were always traces, sir. Kamala is not a very smart woman. She is—simple, shall we say. One time the poison appeared in a dish she made for Mother when Mother was sick. Another time it appeared in a drink when there was no one around but Kamala and Mother. And it was the same poison as the first time.’

  Hamid Pasha nodded slowly, murmuring something under his breath. Nagarajan asked Venkataramana, ‘What was the poison, sir, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘Arsenic, Kotesh said.’

  ‘Interesting, is it not, miyan?’ said Hamid Pasha, looking in Nagarajan’s direction. ‘I think our conversation with Kamala mem is going to be very interesting.’

  Venkataramana said, ‘She must have finished her kitchen work by now. She will be in a very chatty mood— a good time to talk.’

  ‘We will, miyan.’

  ‘I suppose you will not want me around while you talk to her.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It is time for my walk, anyway.’

  Hamid Pasha bowed to the man. ‘Thank you, miyan. You have been most helpful to us.’

  With a smile and a quick adjustment of the glasses, Venkataramana turned, opened the door and led them back out into the hall. He then pointed them in the direction of the kitchen and the dining table that sat adjoining it, the arrangement very similar to what they had seen in Koteshwar Rao’s house. ‘Please. I will take your leave now,’ he said, and walked away to the front door.

  When they had covered half the distance to the dining table, Hamid Pasha leaned toward Nagarajan and said, ‘A little too eager, was he not, miyan, to tell on his wife and son?’

  Just as Nagarajan opened his mouth to reply, a lady came out of the kitchen, and Hamid Pasha advanced towards her, bowing in his elaborate fashion.

  11

  INSPECTOR NAGARAJAN’S first impression of Kamala was that she was a tall, hefty woman, but on moving closer to her he saw that she only came up to Hamid bhai’s shoulders, and Hamid bhai was a good half-foot shorter than he was. That put her somewhere around the five-foot mark, about as tall as Karuna and Prameela were. But whereas the other two were frail and thin-boned, Kamala sported wide shoulders and sturdy bones. Watching her, he thought, one got the impression she meant business.

  She looked slightly taken aback at the appearance of Hamid Pasha fussing over her, but she managed to show him to a chair and joined her hands in greeting when she saw Nagarajan. Nagarajan returned the gesture.

  ‘Please sit down,’ she said.

  Her voice bore a roughness that no doubt gave people the feeling that she was dominating them even when she meant no such thing. One of Nagarajan’s grandmothers had been like that. Why, even now, though the lady present had probably nothing but welcome in her heart, Nagarajan heard a chilly tone of animosity ripple underneath her voice. Whether it was really there or not Nagarajan could not decide.

  She started the proceedings, as she was probably used to doing. ‘I saw you speaking to my husband earlier,’ she said. ‘He thinks I did it, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Oh, memsaab.’ Hamid Pasha jerked forward, and quickly turned to Nagarajan and back to Kamala. ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘You don’t have to lie to me, sir. There have been enough lies in this family already.’ The lines of her face were harsh, and as she said those words, they deepened. She looked away past the open window. Her hands were placed on the table before them: nice hands, Nagarajan noticed, but lined and wrinkled with age. The tip of her left forefinger twitched every second or two.

  ‘I will not lie to you, memsaab,’ said Hamid Pasha at length. ‘Your husband did not say that you did it. No, memsaab, but he did say that you had the most reason to kill his mother.’ He paused, and then asked in a softer tone, ‘Do you agree with that, memsaab?’

  ‘Ha,’ she said, ‘I am the only one in the family that speaks her mind, sir, and that is what I get for that. Everyone in this house—everyone, and I include my husband in this—speaks one thing and thinks another. They are nice and sweet and smiling to your face, and to your back they will stick a knife if it suits them. That is why they say I must be the one to have killed the old woman, because I have never made it a secret that I disliked her. But do you think anyone in the house really liked her? Everyone wanted her gone, sir. I doubt there is one person in the family who is really weeping over her loss—apart from Praveen, maybe.’

  ‘Not even your husband, memsaab?’

  ‘Yes, why lie? My husband had enough reason to want her gone.’

  ‘Swami saab was telling us that the old lady had some harsh words with your husband during that last week?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, that is true. I overheard some words too; I am sure the whole street did. She was warning him against the two other louts in the family, you know. ‘Do not trust those two louts’, I heard her say. My husband was the favourite son.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Hamid Pasha, ‘indeed!’

  Her face seemed to soften for a moment, but the lines reappeared. ‘If anything, sir,’ she said, ‘I had the least reason to wish ill upon my mother-in-law. I have made my peace with what is my lot in this house. I was not pleased about it when I first found out what it was—my husband must have told you about that—and I made a lot of noise about it for a long time, but I had come to terms with it. Why, after all these years, when my own sons have grown up and have children themselves, would I feel fresh anger towards the old woman? I had never liked her, I admit that, but the wound had long healed, believe me.’

  Hamid Pasha leant forward in his chair, placing his elbows on the table and clasping his hands together. ‘Do you mean to say,’ he said, ‘that for some of the others in this house the wounds are fresher? More alive?’

  ‘Oh, hell, yes!’ She almost spat out the words. ‘What do you think my husband broods over day in, day out? How well do you think his cultivation is going in Puthoor? I come from a family of farmers, sir. My husband might think I know nothing of “men’s matters”, and I don’t attempt to openly contradict him on that, but I have seen the papers. I know those lands cannot be rescued if we don’t throw money to them— and fast.’

  ‘And Kauveramma did not know that?’

  ‘Ha,’ Kamala said, sneering. ‘Do you think my husband would tell that to his dear mother? One word of love from her and he would be over the moon. ‘Mother said that today, Mother said this today’... do you think a man like that, who craves for his mother’s approval day in, day out—like a boy in nursery school—would tell his mother that he has screwed up? Fat chance!’

  ‘So you think your husband had a good reason to do away with his mother.’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir. My husband and both his brothers. At least my husband is earning something. What are those two doing? They were always leeching off her, the two of them. And Kauveramma was a smart enough lady. She had more sense of money than all her sons put together, sir, and even
her husband, they tell me. He was always giving his money away to whoever asked for it. But she—she ran a tight ship, she did.’

  Nagarajan asked, ‘Were there any—quarrels about money between the sons and her?’

  ‘Every day, sir, every day. Every day we’d hear her say no to Raja or Swami and they would yell and call her names and tell her it’s all their money and that they wish she was dead—you know, all the nice stuff. Never brought home a paisa, those two, but they guzzled it down like pigs.’ She jerked her head towards her left. ‘Those communist party people that Swami gave the land to—do you think they ever pay rent? That land’s as good as gone!’

  Hamid Pasha said, apparently shocked, ‘No!’

  ‘Ha, yes! People around here think that we’re earning lakhs on that plot, but we’re getting nothing. I think we got the rent the first two months—and that’s about it. Lucky to have got that, if you ask me.’

  ‘Between you and us, memsaab, does Swami saab have any—er—political aspirations?’

  She gave a mock sigh. ‘Sir, a man like Swami saab— who will take him into a party? A man who cannot look after his mother’s wealth; a man who cannot even spend his mother’s wealth—him? In a political party? You make me laugh.’

  ‘And what of Raja?’

  She seemed momentarily disoriented, as if Hamid bhai’s question had interrupted a train of thought. She asked sharply, ‘Raja? What of him?’

  ‘What is his—story?’

  ‘A fairly sad one. He had an attack of polio and was semi-paralysed in both his arms and legs. He knew when to play the “I am the sad, lame son” card on my mother-in-law. If any of the sons had any power over her, I must say it was Raja. Not surprising, I guess—they say mothers love their handicapped children more than the others.’

  ‘So their relationship was a stable one?’

  Again a chuckle burst forth from her. ‘Inspector, this family doesn’t do “stable”. It was nowhere near what you and I would call stable. You see, Raja makes a living out of watching movies. Well, not a living, because he doesn’t earn any money—what I mean is he spends his life watching movies. He catalogues them too, you know; he has a nice big yellow book with a list of all the movies he has ever watched, complete with details like the name of the hero, the heroine, how many songs etc.

  ‘And movies too cost money, especially when you cannot walk and you have to go to the movie theatre in a rickshaw and tip the rickshaw-puller extra for giving him a hand—you know, that sort of thing. Three shows a day, every single day, over a period of twenty years now, can impose some strain on even the largest of fortunes. So Kauveramma had recently started rationing his movies.’

  ‘Rationing?’

  ‘Yes. Rationing. You’re only allowed to go to one movie a day, she said. Oh, what a fuss he made that day! The whole house came to know that he wasn’t eating and he wasn’t speaking and he wasn’t letting anyone into his room. And the abuses I heard from his lips that day, sir—some of the vilest words anyone could ever speak, and all of them directed at his mother. He was like a drug addict—oh, and that reminds me—the cigarettes! Kauveramma hated his cigarettes, and I daresay she only let him have one pack a day or something like that, which, if you ask me, was still too much... and there was another big row over that.’ She looked at Inspector Nagarajan, shook her head with a smile, and said, ‘No, nothing “stable” about that, is there?’

  Nagarajan shrugged. ‘Either way, I guess he is the only one who could not have killed her. He cannot walk.’

  ‘That much I agree with,’ she said. ‘Of all the people in the house, I would say Raja is the least likely killer.’

  ‘You would not go so far as to say he could not have killed her?’

  She smiled again. ‘No, because I’ve seen him move on his crutches. He can move quite quickly when he wants to. And I don’t know if you noticed it or not, he has strong hands.’

  Nagarajan thought back to the first time he had seen the lame man and how the strength and heft of his upper body and arms had struck him. He nodded at Kamala.

  ‘Also,’ she said, watching him, ‘he might not be able to do the deed, but that doesn’t mean he cannot have planned it. While I agree he cannot have done the former, I am certain he has the temerity to do the latter.’

  ‘Ah,’ Hamid Pasha said. ‘How interesting your family is, memsaab. Even someone like Karuna, who to outward appearances looks so innocuous—’

  ‘Ha!’

  ‘Hain? What? You do not think so?’ Nagarajan watched the surprise on the old man’s face and knew at least some of it had to be put on.

  Kamala did not notice it, though. She said, ‘You’re not from around here, are you, sir? Calling Karuna innocuous— ha!—if anyone around these parts heard you say those words they would laugh in your face. She is the vilest of all these people, sir. You could argue that Swami, Raja, my husband and my sister-in-law have some good in their hearts somewhere—or even that they are naturally good people who sometimes do bad things—but this one, Karuna, is pure evil. She has her mother in her fist completely, she does. Her mother says and does anything only after asking Karuna and getting her approval.’

  ‘But why would Karuna want to do away with the old woman? What would she stand to gain?’

  Kamala smiled pityingly at Hamid Pasha. ‘Money, sir,’ she said. ‘With Karuna it is always money. It is strange— she was born in such an affluent family, almost literally with a silver spoon in her mouth, sir, and yet she is the kind that will stick a knife in you and wrench that one-rupee coin out of your dead grip. Why, she and Swami positively hate each other.’

  Hamid Pasha sat forward. ‘Indeed?’

  ‘Oh, “hate” is an understatement for what they have for each other. Extreme loathing may be a better way of putting it. Even now, they don’t look at each other in the eye, let alone speak to one another. There have been big rows about this, that or the other every time she has been here, except this time. I suppose they would have had one if the old woman had not kicked the bucket. Even so, today or tomorrow, I expect one to happen.’

  ‘But madam,’ Hamid Pasha asked, ‘what is the reason for it?’

  Kamala shrugged. ‘Do you need reasons? Sometimes you just don’t like someone, do you, and the more they move around in front of you the more you hate them. I suppose it is something like that between Karuna and Swami. Right from her childhood. Kotesh and the other kids got along quite well with him, but Karuna? And as she grew up her hatred grew with her, I guess. Swami is not always the first one to cast the stone, though, I must admit. He is trying his best to stay out of the way, but she calls him some bad names, sir, she has got the tongue of a truck-driver! And when you call a man such names, it is only natural you get a reaction.’

  ‘Have there been any such fights recently?’

  Kamala said, ‘Everytime she comes home, sir, they fight. Why, a couple of months back, Swami had to go to Hyderabad on some work and my sister-in-law suggested he stay with Karuna. I ask you, sir, how dumb can you get? How can you lead a goat into the cave of a lion and expect him to be well taken care of? I remember the old woman asked if it was really necessary that he should go to Karuna’s house, but then my sister-in-law asked where else would he go? Swami is not the kind that stays in hotels, you know, and it was only for one night, she said. What could happen in one night?

  ‘Well, enough happened. Swami was given some old clothes to sleep on for the night, and he was given some torn curtains to cover himself. Karuna said her daughter was having a friend over for the night, so the guest bedroom was taken. Swami had to sleep on the verandah, and you know how bad the mosquitoes are in the monsoon—well, needless to say, he was not in a particularly good mood when he came back. Told his mother that they would never, ever, have Karuna back in the house again.’

  Hamid Pasha’s brow creased into a frown. ‘And what did she say, the memsaab?’

  ‘Oh, something conciliatory, I suppose. What else could she say? She would ha
ve said that Karuna was family, Swami. We don’t talk like that of our own people, Swami. And then she would have turned to Prameela and wondered out loud as to where Karuna had got this stingy attitude from. She would proclaim to the world no one in her family behaved like that. And then she would go to her room and say nothing about it, in the hope that everyone would forget the matter.’

  Kamala’s eyes blazed, and her voice broke. ‘You know, sir,’ she said, ‘that is the problem with this house. People don’t talk. People don’t think about things. They don’t solve things. They ignore them. They think that each incident in life is a one-off, and if you could gloss over one, you could gloss over all the others. They don’t realise that everything is connected, that resentment builds over time if it is not nipped, that once hate topples over a certain point, even the smallest of things grate; even the little idiosyncracies become huge fighting points; that people can be brought to a level where they would be ready to kill you because they don’t like the way you smile or the way you tie your hair.’

  Nagarajan sat back in his chair and watched her, his head bent low over his chest. He could tell she was speaking from experience about the family, but what of the speech on hate and resentment? Was it something she had noticed in the members of the household? Or was it something she individually felt as well? She was panting now from the effect of her own words, and her cheeks were spotted with red. In spite of that, her lips were pale, and she suddenly took on the appearance of a very old, very tired woman.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she said.

  ‘No, memsaab,’ Hamid Pasha said gently. ‘What you say is true. Very true.’

  She smiled at Hamid Pasha, and this time there was no condescension in it. It was an open, grateful smile. ‘You are probably here looking for evidence; you’re looking for somebody who saw somebody leaving the house with a bloodied knife, aren’t you? And here I am giving you theories on family life.’