by Salil Desai
That was always the potent weapon of tricksters—the ability to win the trust of their victims. And it wasn’t just gullible folks who fell for it. All kinds of people did, when they were in some stage of emotional vulnerability. It was like even otherwise healthy people falling grievously ill when their immunity levels are low.
“Did you ask where Anushka Doshi had learnt these past life regression techniques?” Motkar queried.
“Yes, as a matter of fact I had asked her earlier and she told me the names of some psychoanalysts in Delhi and also how she had undergone training with some well-known hypnotherapists in Bangalore and Mumbai. She also said she’d attended a workshop of some international expert in this field, some Dr. Brian Weiss, when he’d come to India in 2006.”
Motkar nodded and quickly made a note. “Please go on about what happened thereafter.”
“Then she described the kind of experience I might undergo during the session . . . how I might see vivid memories and scenes from my past lives, hear sounds and voices, even feel sensations or smell things, as if everything were happening for real. She told me to be prepared to experience distressful happenings or incidents from my previous births because these were the key to understanding some of my fears and sufferings in this life and the only way to overcome them and heal was by understanding what my soul went through in my past lives . . . So I should not resist such sad or painful memories.”
“How did she hypnotise you? Did she make you take some drug or something?”
“No, she didn’t try anything like that. She simply asked me to shut my eyes and then softly gave me step by step instructions to relax my mind and body, which I followed and felt myself slowly entering into, how shall I put it, an altered state of consciousness,” Kunika Ahuja replied, almost as if she were reliving the experience. “Then she asked me if I could see a staircase. When I said I did, she asked me to descend the staircase. Finally, she asked me if I could see a door, which again I did. Anushka Doshi told me that it was the gateway to my past lives and all I had to do was open the door.”
“What happened next?” Motkar prompted.
“Well, I opened the door and then began seeing a bewildering array of images like in a dream . . . but . . . but very real, which she kept asking me to describe. At first nothing made sense but I had this feeling of familiarity as if I had seen all this before or been there before, you know like a déjà vu. It was as if I was looking at some old photo album. Anushka Doshi kept asking questions and I kept answering what I saw or heard or felt.”
“What kind of questions did she ask?”
Kunika Ahuja frowned. “Actually it’s a bit of a blur, that first session. I was just too astonished by the whole experience. I think she asked me things like where did I think I was? Who were the people I could see? What was I wearing? Did I have any idea of the period? Hundred years ago or five hundred years ago? These kinds of things . . . but it’s all vague. What I do remember distinctly after that session was that for the first time in months I felt exuberantly happy, as if my sadness had fallen away . . . that my soul and existence was immortal and did not have to be pinned down to the despair and sadness of my current life.” She paused awkwardly, as if conscious of how gullible she must sound.
“I see. What did Anushka Doshi say to you at the end of the first session?”
“She told me that I had sort of seen a trailer of my previous lives and that in the next session she would help me go deeper with the help of the notes she had made of what I had seen and heard. Anushka said everything I had told her meant something, and that she would analyse it and chart my course to reconnect with important aspects of my past lives.”
“Nothing struck you as odd or didn’t Anushka Doshi make any kind of suspicious suggestions?” Motkar asked.
“No, absolutely not. In fact we had the second session because I was really eager and hopeful that this past life regression would help me. So I called her back on my own in the next few days.”
“I see. So tell me about the second session. Did you actually find out what you were in your previous births?” Motkar asked.
Perhaps the slight, unintentional note of derision in his tone conveyed itself to Kunika Ahuja. She stopped stroking the dog and her expressions became full of deep embarrassment. “Inspector, if-if you don’t mind I’d rather not talk about it. I . . . I still haven’t been able to make out if what I saw and experienced that day during the session might have been a real glimpse into my past lives or whether Anushka Doshi only played tricks with my mind . . . I mean, she was an evil woman, but at least in those first two sessions did she really give me a genuine experience, or was it just a con?”
“I understand. So when exactly and why did you start suspecting something was wrong?”
Kunika Ahuja was silent for a few moments, and then quite extraordinarily she pulled Bruno on to her lap, clutching him closer as if he were some teddy bear from her childhood. Bruno appeared to become a little self-conscious as if even he felt he was too grown up to sit in his mistress’s lap in front of strangers. But clearly, Kunika Ahuja seemed to need his proximity to speak further.
“Actually, I started getting uncomfortable right from the time Anushka Doshi turned up for the third session because she seemed like a different woman from the one I had known so far. There was a fake, edgy geniality to her manner and an impatient calculated-ness appeared in her behaviour. She was also very pushy. She started by saying that I wasn’t going deep enough into a hypnotic trance, which was hindering the process of regression. She said she’d got some tonic to give me that would induce a deeper state of hypnosis. When I declined, Anushka became irritable and almost hostile, saying she was only trying to help and if I didn’t trust her, it was no use.
‘‘I was firm about not taking the tonic, but although I felt uneasy, I allowed her to hypnotise me because I hadn’t felt any kind of fear yet. Throughout that session however there was something cold and unpleasant in the tone of her voice. Then for some unknown reason, I suddenly snapped out of the trance midway and something about the way she was looking at me, sent a chill down my spine. There was something very, very predator-like in her eyes. It scared me!”
Kunika Ahuja gave a little grimace and perhaps sensing his mistress’s discomfort, Bruno bestowed another lick on her face.
“Please go on.”
“Anushka Doshi once again remarked that I wasn’t going into deep trance and that she wouldn’t help me get to the root of my issues if this continued. She insisted that the tonic had to be taken. I fended her off, telling her we’d see next time and that I was feeling unwell. By now I was really alarmed because I could sense a kind of ruthless desperation in her. Somehow she finally left but was back the next day at my shop, back to being sweet and persuasive. But there was a certain cunning I could feel behind it all. When I refused another session immediately, she suddenly started telling me I would be doomed to grief and loneliness because there was a very specific reason she had diagnosed as the root of my unhappiness from all that I had told her during the hypnosis. Luckily a few customers came along at that time, so Anushka left, much to my relief.”
“I see. But in your letter you’ve mentioned you were scared for your life and you had a narrow escape. Tell me about that incident,” Motkar asked, wanting to get to the core of the story.
Kunika Ahuja hesitated. “Inspector, it wasn’t just one particular incident. The thing is Anushka had now started coming to my shop or calling me on my mobile almost daily. It was as if she was stalking me. She once again harped on the secret of my unhappiness in my past lives and told me an extremely perverse story. She said all indications were that in my previous life I had been a woman . . . trapped in the body of a man . . . and because the issue had remained unresolved in that birth, it continued to fester in my soul and being in this birth too, even though I was born a woman in this birth. She said, even though my physical self had changed, the inner conflict and torment I had experienced in the previous
birth between my male and female sides continued to persist and made me feel devastatingly lonely and desolate in this life. Anushka said the only way out of such suffering was to purge my soul of the unresolved, suppressed emotions and conflicts of the previous birth by playing them out through past life regression.”
She stopped, regarding Motkar and the lady constable anxiously; as if doubtful they would believe what she was saying.
PSI Motkar gave a sympathetic nod. “Interesting! So did you give in to Anushka Doshi’s badgering?”
“It affected me. I was quite tired of my own state of mind and wondered if what she said might be worth trying, to get rid of the negativity I regularly experienced. I thought what harm could another session do? Anushka had not really done anything bad to me and perhaps her solution might help, even though the memory of her behaviour during the previous session rankled. So I finally agreed to one last session with her. I made her promise that she would not bother me again if the session did not provide me relief, but she replied that its success depended on me using the tonic so that I could go into a deeper trance. Initially I agreed, but when Anushka came for the session I kept getting an extremely uneasy feeling about the tonic, as if it would put me in danger. I told her that I had changed my mind about taking the tonic. She was clearly angry but accepted my decision. That day Bruno too seemed restive and kept barking at her when I tried to lock him in the other room, as I usually did during the trance.”
Kunika Ahuja paused and lovingly stroked the dog, then looked up at Motkar. “Call it my sixth sense or Bruno’s, but he saved me that day.”
“What exactly happened?”
Kunika Ahuja’s eyes filled with tears and for a moment she was overwhelmed, as they rolled down her cheeks. Bruno sensed it and shifted his position, moving out of her lap and standing on the floor, facing her and wagging his tail helplessly. He gave a little yelp as if to console his mistress, then started rubbing his mouth and head against her body.
“Can we get you some water, Ms. Ahuja?” Motkar asked gently.
“No, I’m okay,” she sniffed, suddenly stronger. “Anushka Doshi put me into hypnosis and began asking me questions. I again started seeing and experiencing scenes and visuals from what seemed my past life as a man, and then suddenly I felt a sensation of great fear and alarm overcome me . . . and just about the same time Bruno broke into a ferocious round of barking. As a result I snapped out of my hypnotic spell. The first thing I realised was that Anushka Doshi was standing beside me, and the look in her eyes was . . . murderous. In her hands was her dupatta, but somehow the way she was holding it made me feel she had just been about to slip it around my neck and squeeze. She froze when she saw me looking at her and for a few seconds we just stared at each other, as if each of us knew precisely what was going on in each other’s mind. Then her demeanour suddenly changed and she started complaining that the dog’s barks had broken my trance and that’s why the tonic should have been taken. I quickly got up and opened the door for Bruno and he came in and stood growling at her.
‘‘I told her then and there that I was not interested in any more sessions; she became furious. She ranted at me, saying she would never forget the insult and that I didn’t know who she was and what she was capable of. From that day I have always been scared she would come back, and so I never left Bruno’s side. I also took him to the shop with me.”
“Are you saying Anushka Doshi intended to attack you that day?”
“Yes! Inspector, not just attack, she was planning to strangle me. I could see it in her eyes, and if my sixth sense and Bruno’s barks had not snapped me out of the trance, she would’ve slipped that dupatta around my neck. I was that close to death, I’m sure, whether you believe me or not!” Kunika Ahuja said defiantly.
“But why do you think she would do that?” PSI Motkar asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe she wanted to rob my belongings, maybe she was a psycho, maybe she had some other horrible reason in mind, I have no idea what she was after.”
PSI Motkar studied the forty-five-year-old, pockmarked, stocky spinster in front of him once again. Was she being hysterical or over-reacting? That she had undergone the unpleasant experiences with Anushka Doshi, as she described, he had no doubt. From other accounts as well, that of Gawli, the real estate agent, and Surekhabai, the cook, Anushka Doshi had emerged as a vicious woman. It was therefore entirely likely that Kunika Ahuja was right in believing she had narrowly escaped coming to harm or being murdered. The sight of an assailant standing so close to her, with a murderous look and dupatta in her hands, was certainly powerful enough to create and leave a lasting impression on a would-be victim’s mind.
But could it be that the truth was more pedestrian? That Anushka Doshi didn’t have murder in mind but was hoping to use Kunika Ahuja’s hypnotic state to bind and gag her and then commit robbery in the house? Or maybe she was just standing close to her client to try her damndest to ensure the trance did not break? After all, the session was a make or break session for her and there was simply no evidence of her actually trying to attack Kunika Ahuja.
“You think I was imagining all this, don’t you? That a foolish, middle-aged, ugly spinster like me is being hysterical and fanciful,” Kunika Ahuja suddenly spoke with bitterness. “That’s why I didn’t want to be identified, because I fully expected not to be taken seriously.”
“No, no, Ms. Ahuja. I’m sorry,” PSI Motkar said, genuinely apologetic. “I am sure you’ve undergone a nasty experience. It just got me thinking that if Anushka Doshi tried it with you, she must’ve also attempted it with someone else too. But none of her other past life regression clients has revealed any such experience. I’m wondering why.”
“Because, Inspector, you don’t realize how humiliating and traumatic it is for people like me to talk about such ordeals. It’s the fear of being the subject of scorn and pity and ridicule, more than one already encounters,” Kunika Ahuja replied and bit her lips. She began stroking Bruno’s head as if that is all she could do to stop bursting into tears.
Despite his aversion for any form of sentimentality, Senior Inspector Saralkar couldn’t help feeling elated at being back home, even if it was just for a fraction of a second. Of course he immediately swatted away such silly thoughts as if they were flies, although they kept buzzing back as he went about freshening up and getting ready to go to office. It bugged him no end that the general buoyancy he felt this morning had to be ascribed to the fact of being back home.
The final straw was when he found himself humming under his breath when he finished dressing up. He frowned at himself in the mirror. This was getting out of hand. He had to get back to his usual unsentimental self. His mobile rang. It had to be either Jyoti or Motkar, Saralkar knew, as he walked over to pick it up from the table.
“Back?” his wife asked, as soon as he took the call.
“Yes,” he replied, dismayed at feeling nice to hear her voice just when he was trying to be himself again. “Just finished my bath.”
“Going to office?”
“Of course,” he replied petulantly. “I already told you.”
“Okay. Don’t be late in the evening,” Jyoti said. “And eat lunch before you go. It’s on the table.”
“Yes. I know. You already told me.”
Jyoti called off chirpily, as if she’d paid no attention to his brusqueness. And for once Saralkar wondered how she had put up with his chronic grumpiness all these years.
Jyoti had neatly laid out dal, bhaji, roti and rice, in different vessels on the table along with a cryptic note stating ‘curd is in the fridge.’
He heated up the items in the microwave and served himself. From the first morsel itself it all tasted good. He wasn’t really a foodie but was quite picky about what he ate. He hated exotic, complicated dishes or trying out new cuisine. Green vegetables and salads were also anathema. While all this had presented a mighty headache for Jyoti early on in their married life, because of the limited options, permuta
tions, and combinations she had for cooking meals, she’d learned to manage the show deftly.
Saralkar ate his lunch thoughtfully, sifting through the impressions and information lodged in his mind about the Doshi case. By the time the meal ended, his mind was again hovering over the perplexing connection to Kalicharan that his brain still hadn’t retrieved, but kept niggling him about. What could it possibly be? He mined his memory for bits and pieces of recollection about the film. The basic story of Kalicharan was about a brave, young police officer, Shatrughan Sinha, who gets bumped off by the villain, Ajit, a smuggler operating under the guise of a rich, philanthropic businessman. Before dying, the officer scribbles a clue to the villain’s identity, which no one is able to decipher. The police officer’s father, himself a senior cop, decides to conceal the death of his son by replacing him with a hardened convict he comes across, who is the splitting image of his dead son. The idea is to use the lookalike as a bait to get the villain to strike again, out of the fear that his identity would be revealed once the police officer regains his lost memory. That was the substance of the plot of the movie, peppered with the usual thrills, fights, and staple clichés of Hindi films of the 1970s, until the villain is finally unmasked and brought to justice.
In fact, Saralkar remembered, the basic premise was almost the same as that of an iconic film released at the same time, titled Don, starring superstar Amitabh Bachchan, except of course that in Don, a mafia don who dies is replaced by a lookalike in order to ferret out the entire gang and its leaders. Both films had been huge hits. But why was he thinking about Don, Saralkar wondered, when his brain had only conjured up a connection with Kalicharan?
He got up, put his plate in the sink, and began cleaning up, simultaneously trying to draw possible parallels between the Doshi case and Kalicharan. Prima facie he couldn’t see any and he was certainly not about to believe that his brain was hinting at the silly possibility of a convenient double being involved in the Doshi murder case. That happened only in films. And in any case, Saralkar knew his mind was far too refined to latch on to such hackneyed or disingenuous possibilities. Perhaps it would help if he watched the movie again on DVD. Maybe then his mind would make the connection again.
