‘Hmph,’ the begum said.
‘Ah. Ah.’ He stepped to the sink and splashed his face with two handfuls of water. ‘Ah.’ Panting, he moved back to his station and picked up the knife again. In his other hand he took a fresh onion. ‘Yes,’ he said dreamily. ‘Hands. I am fascinated by hands, begum.’
The begum giggled and said, ‘Chup.’
‘Hands keep coming into this problem, begum, more than they should. Karuna Mayi’s hands, clean, pale... Raja saab’s hands, shaking, strong, stout... Prameelamma’s hands, nervous, clasping, sweaty... Swami saab’s hands, quiet, agile, beautiful... Lakshman’s hands, sweaty and wet and sticky and slippery... Kauveramma’s hands—yes, Kauveramma’s hands on the morning of her death: dark and spotty, and later on, the water in which she washed her hands was red. Was it the arsenic that caused it? And Koteshwar Rao’s hands—the hands of a surgeon, clinical, steady, never nervous... hands that nursed the old woman, hands that held on to the old woman when he was a child, hands that could have, if he wanted, administered anything to her with no emotion attached; yes, Koteshwar Rao is a doctor. He has seen death. He would not be fazed by it.
‘Hands—I do not understand my fascination with them, begum, but it is there. Perhaps I am a fool. Perhaps I am just an old lecherous man and nothing else.’
‘Haanji.’
18
THERE WERE SOME art houses in Hyderabad which could claim to have fallen on bad times. There was the Nartanasala which opened some time in the late 1970s to packed houses, whether it was staging Kuchipudi or the Telugu translation of a Shakespearean play. In the 1980s, with the advent of television, Nartanasala saw a steady thinning of patrons. The organisers gave in, unable to shoulder the running costs as more and more tickets came back unsold. In 1988, the art house gave way to a movie theatre called Sangeet, which was now, in 2011, in turn giving way to a multiplex. Very few Hyderabadis still remembered Nartanasala.
Kalanjali’s story, though, was a little different. It was situated in Padmaraonagar, twenty years ago a fringe suburb, now very much in the thick of Secunderabad, Hyderabad’s sister city. Kalanjali had never touched the heights Nartanasala did in its heyday; even in the 1970s Kalanjali staged Vijay Tendulkar, Karnad and Tagore, scripted and played by motley crews of bank clerks, revenue office employees, registration officers, retired army men, and housewives. If Nartanasala attracted the cream of young professional acting and dancing aspirants, Kalanjali threw her weight in with the spirited amateurs. While Nartanasala drew throngs week after week and spilled out of every orifice with patrons of art, Kalanjali considered her job well done if on any given weekend her auditorium was half-filled with people, accounting for the fact that at least a quarter of those present were friends and family of the performers.
One never had to worry about tickets running out with Kalanjali; one simply walked in two minutes before the show and took one’s pick of a seat. No one ever read in the papers what played at Kalanjali during the weekend; they never advertised; if Nartanasala was your rich socialite aunt who threw the best party in town, Kalanjali was like your mother’s place; you never had to call before you dropped in, you never had to wonder if you would have a good time if you went, and most of all you could be sure you would not be turned away.
Throughout the Eighties and Nineties and the decade following that, Kalanjali stuck to her position, staging show after show and dance after dance every weekend, and the smattering of patrons that filled its auditorium was enough to keep her going. She never aspired to more, and she never achieved less.
Mrs Geeta Pradhan, the eighth chief organiser of Kalanjali in forty years, looked across the table from over her rimless glasses and scowled. She had a rehearsal she had to oversee in ten minutes, the junior artistes that the Aparajita people requested for had to be interviewed, props had to be set up for Krishnamurthy sir’s daughter’s Bharatanatyam performance, and a balcony had to be set up for the Romeo and Juliet piece that was on later. She had enough on her hands without strange-looking Muslim elderly gentlemen knocking on her door without an appointment.
She allowed herself to consider him for a minute: shabby, stained clothes, unkempt beard that he kept scratching every minute; a yellow-white Nehru cap sitting on top of his bald head; a brown waistcoat with a large egg-stain near the left shoulder—she stopped herself and sighed. Where did these people come from?
‘Yes, Mr Pasha?’ She clasped her hands in front of her on the table. ‘How may I help you?’
‘Yes, memsaab, I come from Warangal. I hope I do not take up much of your time. I have to be back in my city by lunchtime.’
Mrs Pradhan fixed him with a cold eye. ‘The length of this interview, Mr Pasha, is entirely dependent on you telling me as quickly as possible what you want.’
‘Of course, memsaab. You have here a very good establishment, I believe, for aspiring actors?’
‘Are you one?’ Mrs Pradhan weighted that question with a healthy dose of sarcasm.
The man blushed. ‘Very much so, memsaab. I have played many, many roles in the past—Duryodhan in the Mahabharata, the Prophet Mohammed, Judas in the crucifixion story—I, ah, I even played Romeo in my schooldays.’
‘Is that so?’
‘You were recommended to me by my very good friend, Ms Karuna Mayi—she told me you were a friend of hers.’
Mrs Pradhan’s eyes narrowed over the little man. She would have to have a chat with Karuna one of these days. Just because she had taken on one of Karuna’s recommended actors, it did not mean that she would accept everyone that walked in off the street. Kalanjali was a profit-making organisation, she thought grimly, and it might not be a bad idea to remind Karuna of that once she got back from wherever she was. And also, she thought, she should remind her not to tell everyone that she was ‘a friend of hers’.
To Hamid Pasha she said, ‘Okay.’
The man appeared crestfallen for a moment, but recovered and said, ‘ave you known Karuna Mayi for long, memsaab?’
‘I know her.’
‘For how long, say?’
‘For about four years now, ever since I came here as chief.’ She lifted her glasses. ‘Are we here to discuss Karuna, Mr Pasha? Because if so, I would rather get back to my work—’
‘Oh, oh, no, memsaab. I—I was wondering if I could be given a part in tonight’s play, memsaab. I heard you were looking for a few extras?’
‘Mr Pasha, I do not know where you got the impression that we employ people coming in off the streets—maybe it is the image that people have of us, but let me assure you, we take in artistes only after a thorough screening procedure.’
‘Hain?’
‘Yes. If you want to become a junior artiste with us, please apply through the regular channel. Ask Ramlal outside and he will tell you what to do.’ She rang the bell and called out to her watchman.
‘Memsaab, please listen to what I have to say.’
Mrs Pradhan smiled sweetly at him. ‘Please tell Ramlal whatever you wish to say to me, Mr Pasha. I will have a chat with him afterwards and get it from him. I really have to rush now; so many things to take care of, you know. It was nice meeting you, Mr Pasha. Hope to see you again.’
She pushed back her chair and was about to get up, but she glanced at the man and stopped. The man had reached into his pocket and produced a small polythene bag, its mouth closed with an orange press-zip. The man’s tone changed, as though he had made up his mind to come straight to the matter instead of beating around the bush. Suddenly Mrs Pradhan felt that all this time this man had been testing her out. He probably had no aspirations of being an actor. His aspirations lay elsewhere.
‘I try to let as few people as possible know my true intentions, memsaab,’ he said. ‘But there is no getting past you. Please sit down.’
She sat down and stared at the plastic bag. ‘Yes?’
The man said, ‘I think you recognise this, do you not?’
Mrs Pradhan nodded, very slowly.
‘I h
ave a few questions to ask you, memsaab,’ the man leant forward in his chair and murmured. ‘It is in relation to a murder.’
19
INSPECTOR NAGARAJAN caressed the fuel-tank of his Rajdoot and smiled. The early evening sun was beating down, the breeze was dry, the shade of the banyan soothing, and there was a chilled lemon soda in his hand. Life was good.
He was at the paan shop on the corner of the street, a few blocks down from Kauvery Bhavan. He leant on his bike and took a good swig of the soda, closing his eyes as it slid down his throat and worked its way up to his nostrils. Nagarajan had seen some other officers—his seniors—who got more and more fidgety as a case went on, and at the very end, when they had the final piece of puzzle in their hand, they zipped around here and there, threw abuses at random, guzzled cup after cup of tea, and bore the general appearance of someone who was constantly being stabbed in the butt by an invisible needle.
But Nagarajan was different. When he knew he held the threads in his hands, he relaxed. As long as the people you were stalking had no idea they were being stalked, there was no reason to hurry. Nagarajan had always identified himself with the tortoise in the old story. Observe. Consider. Consider more carefully. Act. That was his mantra.
By now all considerations were done. All that remained was the act. This was when he relaxed the most. He was almost sleepy. That excellent sambhar he had had at lunch was beginning to work its magic on his eyelids. He closed them for a second.
‘Kyun miyan?’ said a voice, and he stretched open his eyes with a grimace. ‘You seem to have had a busy morning.’
‘Oh, Hamid bhai, the usual, you know.’ Inspector Nagarajan counted modesty among his many virtues.
Hamid Pasha chuckled and tucked his bag under his arm. ‘Elaborate, please.’
‘You know, Hamid bhai,’ Nagarajan said, ‘I sometimes think that a detective has to follow things up, you know? I followed things up, and it got me somewhere.’
‘Acha?’
‘Yes. Do you want a soda?’
Hamid Pasha shook his head.
‘Are you sure? You’re sweating, Hamid bhai.’
‘Ah, yes, it is a hot day.’
Nagarajan leant back and placed his empty soda bottle on the table. ‘Where were you all morning, Hamid bhai?’
‘I went to Hyderabad, miyan. I was following up too, you see.’
Nagarajan raised an eyebrow at the older man. ‘You were following up for a Warangal crime in Hyderabad? That is not even in our jurisdiction.’
Hamid Pasha smiled and shrugged. ‘Sometimes you just follow your nose, miyan.’
‘Where did that lead you this time?’
‘Not important, miyan. It looks like your morning and afternoon were better employed than mine, surely.’
‘Yeah, I’d say so. See, I usually like to check up on things. I don’t believe what these guys are telling us, you know. I know you believe what they say, but I don’t, Hamid bhai. I checked up—first on Raja.’
‘Achha?’
The inspector nodded. ‘When a man says he goes to a movie every morning of every day, and if he says he was out of the house during the day of the murder, you want to check up on that, don’t you? So I put a constable on the job. I got him to shadow Raja. It looks like movies are not the only things that the man is interested in.’
Hamid Pasha said, ‘Ah, yes, the women.’
‘The women,’ Inspector Nagarajan repeated. ‘I don’t know if you know, but if you go down the route of Reddy Colony, by Kothoor flagpost, there is a... ‘
‘Miyan,’ Hamid Pasha said, ‘of course I know’.
‘And there is another thing too. Women cost more than movies, you know. Good women cost even more. Where do you think he gets the money from?’
‘I do not know.’
‘Well, let me explain this to you. Before he leaves home for his “movie”—and sometimes he does go to the movies, by the way—he gets Prabhu, his auto-driver, to dig out a small hole in the sand pit in the corner and remove something. Did you notice the sand pit?’
Hamid Pasha nodded. ‘Mm hmm, mm hmm.’
‘Yes, and then he and Prabhu stop on their way at Lashkar Bazaar. Prabhu takes the packet and delivers it to a tailor in Lashkar Bazaar, and gets a packet in return. Then he returns to the auto, and Raja gives Prabhu his share and pockets the rest.’
‘Miyan!’
Nagarajan nodded sagely. ‘Yes. When Ellayya told us about the men that came asking for “the lame man” the day before, and when he described one of them as a small, snarling fellow with a squint, I got an inkling who he was. You have heard of ganjai Sathi, of course?’
‘Of course.’
‘This fellow is his right hand.’
‘But miyan, Raja is a lame man with no means of procuring this stuff. How did he—’
‘Ah, yes, that is where my other man helped me out— the one I sent to Puthoor to check up on Venkataramana’s farm.’
‘And what did he find?’
Nagarajan smiled. ‘Let’s just say not all of the land is being used to grow cotton. Some of it—a couple of hundred square feet, I would say—is being used to grow “grass”.’
‘So the two brothers are in cahoots with each other?’
‘It appears so. And now we know why the two brothers—Lakshman and Praveen—fought with the old woman. The old woman might have had an inkling of it all. She must have said something to Raja as well, and to Venkataramana. Knowing her she must have threatened both with consequences too dire to imagine, and they must have been left with only one way out.’
Hamid Pasha nodded thoughtfully. ‘So when she referred to the “two louts”, she was referring to the two men that had come looking for Raja?’
‘Precisely. That was why she said the same thing to all three of them; you did not pick up on the fact that she referred to the two louts to all three—Raja, Venkataramana and Prameela—did you?’
Hamid Pasha shook his head. ‘No, I did not.’
‘We still need to get them into a cell and talk to them for a couple of days very gently, I think. I am sure they will tell us all we need to know.’
Hamid Pasha smiled. ‘Yes, I am sure they will. But miyan, what have you been doing all of today? You have told me what your constables have been doing. What have you done, apart from drinking lemon soda?’
‘I solved the mystery of the lover of the doctor’s wife.’
‘Ah,’ Hamid Pasha said. It did not appear to Inspector Nagarajan that he was interested in any way.
‘You don’t think it’s an important part of the case?’
‘Oh, since you have already solved it, let me ask you. Was it important?’
‘No,’ admitted Nagarajan. ‘But it had to be cleared all the same.’
Hamid Pasha sighed. ‘Tell me about it, miyan.’
‘There is not much to tell. I saw the man wandering around the gate and caught him. Sometimes a straight approach works best. I took him straight up to the woman and asked her who he was. Turns out that this man has some of the woman’s old letters. This was before marriage, you understand, but it might affect the doctor all the same.’
Hamid Pasha said, ‘I could have told you that, miyan. And Gauri must have known about this, of course, which is why she got a bribe from Durga to keep quiet. Yes?’
‘Yes.’ After a pause Nagarajan asked, ‘How do you know?’
‘It is quite easy to guess, miyan. Whatever does not add to the piece must be out of the piece. You understand?’ Then he asked, in a softer tone, ‘Anything else?’
‘No—well, I found out that Karuna Mayi was in town early in the morning.’
‘Ah, indeed.’
Nagarajan nodded. ‘One of the porters at the station is part of this racket. When I hinted to Raja that his game was up, he repeated his old story—that he was the only member of the family who could not have killed the old woman. Then he told me about Karuna arriving in Hanamkonda by the early bus. It usually comes in at five-
thirty.’
‘Hmm,’ said Hamid Pasha, and once again Nagarajan saw the uninterested look on his face.
‘I suppose it is not that important. She has lent money to a lot of people in town. Apparently it is a common practice for her to go knocking on people’s doors whenever she comes here. As long as she was not in the house, it does not matter where she was, does it?’
Hamid Pasha stroked his beard and nodded. ‘You could be right, miyan. So have you talked to the two brothers about what you have found?’
Inspector Nagarajan nodded. ‘I have. I requested for some assistance from Warangal and Kazipet Police Stations. I have some men at some key places. Then I told them. I fully expected them to panic and reveal everything. I told them that if they told us the whereabouts of ganjai Sathi, I would make sure they don’t go to jail.’
‘But of course, they will go to jail for killing their mother.’
Nagarajan said, ‘Of course. That is a totally different matter.’ He placed his cap on his head and turned the rear-view mirror of his bike toward himself. Looking into it, he said, ‘Guess who else has a part in this thing.’
Hamid Pasha did not answer.
‘The money that came out of Lashkar Bazaar was divided into three.’
‘Indeed? And the third part went to Swami saab?’
Nagarajan grinned at the older man. ‘You would have thought so, wouldn’t you? But no, it is Prameelamma. Now you know what her argument with the older woman must have been about. Kauveramma learnt of it all— which was why she spoke to everyone involved, including Prameelamma. And Prameelamma must have responded with accusations about her husband and her daughter. That is the conversation that Swami saab heard.’
‘Imagine,’ Hamid Pasha said at great length. ‘You have really outdone yourself, miyan. I must admit I am overwhelmed by what you were able to achieve in a single day.’
Banquet on the Dead Page 20
