Up by the mercury tube Nagarajan saw a lizard scamper after an insect, trap it, chew on it. He felt a little normalcy return. He heard the whining of the patients downstairs, their irritable slapping at mosquitoes while they waited for their doctors. He heard the music for the movie’s first song float his way from Vijaya Talkies across the road. Down below, Shankar, in his dhaba, threw some eggs into a pan; Nagarajan smelled the frying onions and chilli.
He swallowed and cast another look at the boy. His breathing had become more regular; still slow, but regular. Hamid bhai was right. He would live. Nagarajan got off his knees and dusted himself. When he stepped out into the open and took a full breath of nightly breeze in his face he suddenly realised he was drenched in sweat.
‘Make mine a lemon-soda, miyan,’ Hamid Pasha said from inside. ‘And ask Shankar for a pinch of salt to go with it.’
Praveen was a good-looking chap, Nagarajan decided. Even with that puzzled, forlorn expression on his face, the dirt in his hair and on his hands, the crumpled, soiled clothes, his natural beauty shone through. His features were aquiline, his skin was light, and his jaw curved down from his temples to his chin in a perfect, smooth arc. His lips were thin, and even without ever having seen it Nagarajan knew that his smile would be beautiful. His eyes were dark, large and rounded, with delicate eyebrows above them.
He sure had the looks of a hero, Nagarajan reflected, and sipped at his soda. The three of them sat around the table, which Hamid Pasha had dragged back into the middle of the room by the door. Praveen and Nagarajan sat on a chair each while the older man leant against the table itself, half-sitting, half standing.
‘So I guess that did not work, huh?’ Praveen said, and though his voice was weak from his recent ordeal, Nagarajan heard the intrinsic richness of it.
‘It almost did,’ Hamid Pasha said. ‘If we had been a little late in coming, by as little as five minutes...’
The boy sighed. ‘Maybe I would have deserved it. It would have been nice to die.’
‘But my boy,’ said Hamid Pasha, ‘why did you want to punish yourself so?’
Praveen stared at his bottle of soda and turned it around in his hands. ‘The guilt was getting too much. I was seeing blood on the walls... everywhere,’ and then he smiled, an open, inviting smile. ‘Like Lady Macbeth.’
‘I must tell you,’ Nagarajan said in an automatically cold, official voice, ‘whatever you say can and will be used against you... ‘
‘Oh, what do I care when she is gone? And all because of me, too.’
‘Did you kill her, miyan?’ Hamid Pasha asked softly.
Praveen looked straight at him and grinned; the same cynical, lopsided grin Nagarajan had seen on Lakshman’s countenance. He would never have believed that these two were brothers until now, when the grin broke out on Praveen’s face. ‘I did,’ he said simply.
Hamid Pasha narrowed his eyes into slits, and his lips protruded. Nagarajan knew what he was thinking. Did this boy really climb the wall and get into the compound, without anyone noticing, so that he could kill his grandmother? Was it possible? And if he did do it, what did he do it for?
‘But I guess you could never tell, could you? I mean, why do people kill themselves? Can one person ever take responsibility for another person killing themselves?’ He moistened his lips with his tongue. ‘Now that I think of it, I feel I have been a bit absurd. But then maybe I am responsible.’ He sighed. ‘Who can tell?’
‘You think your grandmother committed suicide,’ said Hamid Pasha quietly.
‘And you think she did so because of you?’ Nagarajan added.
‘I am almost sure that she killed herself because of me. Funny, that, because until this afternoon the very idea did not strike me—that I could have hurt her so much that she wanted to kill herself for it.’
‘And what happened this afternoon to give you that idea?’ Nagarajan saw Hamid Pasha bend forward as he asked that question.
‘Oh, that’s not important. Or maybe I am not the only one responsible for her death. Maybe I was only the last straw, you know? Maybe things pushed her closer and closer and I was the one who pushed her at the very end—over the edge, you know?’ He lifted his bottle of soda to his lips. ‘Do you think there is something to that theory?’
Hamid Pasha asked, ‘Do you?’
‘There might be. But I have no doubt I have some say in her death. I said some very nasty things to her that day.
I told her that I wished she was dead.’ His tongue came out to slide over his lips. ‘Thing is, I meant it—oh, yes, I meant it. And she knew I meant it. She probably saw it in my eyes. I saw it in hers.’
‘Why did you wish her dead, then?’
Praveen smiled faintly. ‘Even that may not have been a result of just one thing, you know. Things built up, one on top of another, and I got pushed over my edge. Say, maybe there is something to that theory.’
Hamid Pasha did not say anything. He waited for the boy to speak again. Praveen seemed to Nagarajan to be one of those people who spoke rarely, and when they did, meandered a bit—as though they were just blindly following their thoughts. It was best to let such people talk, only interrupting when the tangent went too wide off the mark.
‘I always did what she asked me to do,’ said Praveen. ‘She seemed to take a liking to me right from the start. I was her favourite grandson; though Kotesh Bava might have something to say about that. It was different with him. She loved him too, of course, but with him there is always a sense of awe, you know? He is one of those people who are good at everything they do.’
Once again there was no answer from Hamid Pasha; only a nod to acknowledge what Praveen had said, and a sip of his own soda.
‘But with me there was love, you know,’ he went on. ‘She took an interest in everything I did—what I ate, what I did in school, what I wore, what subjects I took— everything. I mean everything. My father tells me she fell in love with me when she first saw me in the hospital when I was born. Apparently she said I would make a lot of money; people with deep belly-buttons make a lot of money, that’s what she said.’
‘Did it come true?’ asked Hamid Pasha, glancing around at the room.
‘No,’ said Praveen. ‘At least not yet. And I don’t think it will happen as long as I am working here.’
‘It certainly won’t happen if you kill yourself,’ Nagarajan said coldly.
Praveen laughed. ‘That too. The only way I can “earn” a lot of money is if she has left me something. We haven’t yet seen who the biggest beneficiary is. I bet you two are very interested in knowing that.’ He pointed the bottle at Hamid bhai with a gleam in his eye.
Hamid Pasha nodded. ‘As a matter of fact, we are. Do you have any theories as to who will get how much? If the old lady was close to you, she must have given you some hints.’
‘Ah, no, no. She did not. If I tell you anything about this it will be guesswork on my part. Let me see—Kotesh Bava will get something—maybe a plot or two. He may have got one already. You see, he has been tending to her for a good seven years now; well, tending to all of us, in fact, for free. So none of us will begrudge whatever he gets. One can think of it as repayment...
‘Other than that, it should be a rather clean three-way split between Swamannayya, Raja and my father. Oh, then there is Attayya as well, I guess. She might get a plot or two. Grandmother would have been a little sentimental about her—and with good reason too. She has been through a lot.’
Hamid Pasha leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. ‘Tell me, miyan, how much property is there in total?’
Praveen shrugged and shook his head. ‘Nobody has gone to the trouble of finding out exactly, I am sure. But there is a lot. Even without the backyard plot there is a lot going around for everyone. And this area has developed so much in the last fifteen years or so, you know. Look around at the number of doctors—land here is gold; pure gold.
‘Do you think your father would get a bigger share because he has a
family to support?’
‘Ah—now that makes me think. Grandmother would definitely think along those lines. Yes, you’re right. My father would probably get a slightly bigger share, even though Swamannayya is the eldest.’
‘And Raja might get partial treatment too,’ said Hamid Pasha, ‘because of his condition?’
Praveen looked at Hamid Pasha with a slightly embarrassed smile. ‘You’re not making this easy for me, are you? Yes, of course, that would be correct too. Grandmother was quite partial to Raja, even though they did have such huge rows every now and then.’
‘About his smoking, I gather?’
‘And his movie-going,’ Praveen said. ‘You’d be surprised how much money he spends on movies. And of course, Grandmother didn’t approve of movies at all. Even then, she wouldn’t have minded if he did not spend so much money watching them.’
‘Does the family have nothing by way of earnings?’
Praveen grinned; again that contemptuous curl of the lips. ‘That communist party building you see in the backyard was meant to be an investment. But after they moved in we realised they were more powerful than we were. Of course. They’re a political party. What are we? Kakaji’s descendants? There is only one winner in that battle.’
He coughed, and ran his fingertips along the bruise on his neck. ‘It cut a bit deeper than I thought it would.’ He faced Nagarajan. ‘They say hanging is a painless death. I struggled for a good five minutes before I passed out.’
‘You have to do it just right,’ said Nagarajan.
‘Ah.’ He caressed his bruise thoughtfully for a minute, then turned back to Hamid Pasha. ‘So, yes, it started off being a good investment—they paid us rather well for the first few months; but now we’re almost sure that piece of land is gone. And this won’t be the first time Swamannayya has lost money on a venture. Let us just say he is not a businessman.’ He paused, licked his lips, then said: ‘None of us is.’
‘Not even your father?’
Praveen laughed. ‘Have you talked to my father about it? A similar situation is developing in Puthoor as well. We’re this close to losing our land. But at least it is not in the past tense like this one, and that is agricultural land, so not that high in value. But then, land is land.’ He finished his soda, swallowing it with a grimace. ‘They put too much lemon in this.’
‘So in your opinion, everybody wants money.’
Praveen smiled and said, ‘Yes, everybody does, even you and me.’
‘Even you?’
‘Yes, of course. Why would I be here in this office if I had money? I would set myself up so that I could go to Hyderabad, to Kalanjali, and become a stage actor.’
‘Ah, your brother was telling me about that this evening, miyan. You like the stage, hain?’
‘Yes, the stage... it is the one place where you can forget yourself, isn’t it? If you have an appetite for the arts, you can never satisfy it no matter how much you feed it.’ He stopped, and let out a long sigh. ‘Forget it.’
‘And Kalanjali is—what?’
‘Kalanjali school of dance and acting? In Hyderabad? You don’t know of it?’
Hamid Pasha shook his head.
‘Karuna told me about it. She is a regular member there. She even told me to go to Hyderabad. But then Grandmother said no.’ His tone stayed even, but there was a little twinge of hurt accompanying the last sentence.
‘Did you feel any—resentment—towards her for that?’
‘Resentment,’ Praveen said. ‘You’re starting to speak like my brother now. He asked me a lot of similar questions too: if I’d born resentment, if I’d felt anger...’
‘Well,’ said Hamid Pasha, ‘did you?’
‘It is hard to say, isn’t it? One tends to forget most things. I knew what she was like, so I tried not do thingst she disapproved of, but sometimes I couldn’t help it.’ His eyes acquired a faraway gaze. ‘When that happened and— as expected—she disapproved, I let it go. I didn’t give it much thought. It just—passed. It was only when I sat down and consciously thought about things that I really knew how I felt.’ He played with his hands as he spoke. ‘Isn’t that the way with everyone?’
Hamid Pasha shrugged. ‘You tell us what you feel, miyan. We are here only to listen.’
‘Right,’ said Praveen. ‘Right. So anyway, now that you have asked me how I felt about it, I am now being forced to think about that time, about how Grandmother behaved, her words, her actions... and yes, as you said, there is some resentment; some anger. I don’t love her as much when I think about these things.’
Hamid Pasha asked slowly, ‘Do you hate her at such times?’
Again Praveen smiled. ‘You speak more and more like my brother. Yes, I do—well, I don’t hate her, but I dislike her; intensely.’
‘Enough to want to kill her, perhaps.’
Praveen did not react at all to that. He nodded quite matter-of-factly. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I never thought of actively killing her, but there were times when I thought things would be smoother without her around. She had lived her life; she was now living all of ours, I thought.’
‘And yet you cried the most when you brought her out of the well.’
‘Yes, well, it is one thing wishing a person would go away. When you’re thinking of that you’re imagining how things would be without that person present. It was the same with Grandmother. I wanted her gone—I had that feeling only occasionally, but it was there, and it was very intense. But I wanted her to vanish, you know? Without leaving anything behind. One day she would be there, and the next day she would be gone. And all of us would carry on with our lives...’
His voice sank into a murmur, and there was a catch in his throat which he cleared and started again: ‘But she did leave something behind. I did not bargain for her dead body in the well, facing downward, hair loose, waving in the water, her arms and legs splayed out like a dead frog’s...’
Again his throat caught, and again he released it with a cough. ‘You don’t wish for things like that. But what I did wish for—that she would be gone—was basically this, wasn’t it? In a different form, in an impossible form, maybe, but the wish was for her to die. And it did come true. Just that she did leave something behind, in that well...’
For a third time he cleared his throat, and covered his mouth with his closed fist, bending over it. A thin shudder passed through his body. He massaged his eyes with his fingers; his breathing became forced.
Presently he took a few deliberate breaths and found his voice. ‘I am going to take that sight with me to my pyre, sir, I swear.’
For a minute there was silence. Hamid Pasha emptied his bottle, set it back on the table, and said, ‘Do you not think it strange, my boy, that your grandmother chose to kill herself by jumping into the well?’
‘Because how much she feared it? No, not at all. One way is as good as another. Some people prefer silent, painless deaths. Some like to go for spectacle.’
‘But your grandmother—is she the kind to choose a death of this sort? And for what purpose?’
‘All of us wanted her out of the way, sir—and I am sure all of us have told her that in one way or the other. She was a smart woman.’
‘But that is it? Just because everyone in the family wanted her to die, she would?’
‘Who knows? Maybe it was reason enough for her. Maybe there was a sense of hurt at it all; at how much she had worked at building this family—she had been a young widow with a bunch of kids and a huge estate and a flock of vultures to manage. She did quite well, didn’t she, when you look at it that way?’
‘Most definitely.’
‘Maybe there was a sense of loss, that the family she had moulded with her own hands had now turned its back on her. Maybe, when I turned on her too, it was the last straw...’
‘Has it occurred to you, miyan, that if most of the family did not want her to live, one of them may have pushed her into the well? That she may have been murdered?’
Praveen
said, ‘None of our family members could be murderers. They lack the guts to carry out something like that.’
‘Ah, you agree the intent is there.’
‘Of course. But who cares about intent? The deed is everything.’
‘You said your brother talked to you about your feelings for your grandmother.’
‘Yes?’
‘When did he do it last?’
‘Listen, I know what you’re getting at, and you cannot be more mistaken.’ He paused. ‘Today.’
‘Hain?’
‘Today. He talked to me today. He was here all afternoon. He—when he talked to me I felt like my grandmother’s dying was all my fault. I—yes, he first asked me about all the resentment I held against her, and then asked me whether my quarrelling with her may have pushed her over the edge. He first asked me to promise him that I did not kill her, of course, and I asked him to do the same.’
‘Ah, indeed.’
Praveen nodded. ‘So I am sure he wasn’t referring to actively killing her. But he did hint that I may be responsible. And after he went it started getting dark—and you know how this place gets when it is dark. It feels like the walls are closing in; and I told you, I saw red on them. Just like Macbeth.’ He shook his head and grinned. ‘Now it feels stupid, but when you’re in that zone...’
Hamid Pasha leaned forward. ‘Miyan, do you see that your brother may have had a reason for coming to you and talking to you today? For placing the guilt on your shoulders?’
‘Sir,’ said Praveen, ‘I know what you’re getting at. I told you—none of our family had the balls. My brother—well, he promised.’
‘What is a promise, my boy, when lives are at stake?’
‘Why would he want to do away with me?’ Praveen asked, and Nagarajan saw the seed of doubt had been sown successfully.
‘Why not?’ Hamid Pasha asked. ‘You are his direct competition to your father’s wealth, are you not?’
Banquet on the Dead Page 18
