by Vaseem Khan
‘And the… father?’ Poppy enquired delicately.
‘Vanished!’ sobbed Kiran, quietly. ‘He is some industrialist’s son from Juhu. As soon as Prarthana confronted him about the… about the fact of his irresponsibility, he went crying to his big-shot daddy. The next thing we knew, he had been taken out from the school and sent to study abroad.
‘Of course, I went to see the industrialist, but he told me in no uncertain terms that as far as he was concerned the matter was settled. Do you know what he said to me? “One hand cannot clap by itself”! Oh, Poppy, I was so angry I wanted to give him two tight raps, there and then. But what could I do? If I had told Anand, he would have gone down there and killed the man, you know what a hothead he is.’
‘What about…?’ Poppy paused, not sure how to phrase the delicate question she wanted to ask.
‘No,’ said Kiran, reading her mind. ‘My wretched daughter won’t hear of it. She says she won’t let anyone murder an unborn child. I tried to tell her that this happens all the time. And it can be done discreetly, in complete safety. There are so many doctors who will do it, no one would be any the wiser. She looked at me as if I were some sort of serial killer. It’s all these western films, Poppy, filling her head with foreign notions.’
‘But then, surely she doesn’t want to raise this child!’ Poppy was shocked. The idea of an unwed single mother in her own family was simply too much. The scandal of it!
‘No. She has that much sense at least. My daughter has great ambitions, and realises she won’t be able to achieve them with a child to look after and a scandal following her around everywhere she goes.’
‘But then what does she plan to do?’
‘She wants to give the baby up for adoption.’
It was Poppy’s turn to sit back in thoughtful silence. ‘That means she will have to bear the child. Everyone will know.’
‘No!’ said Kiran, vehemently. ‘No one will know. I have a plan. In a couple of months, when she begins to show, I am going to withdraw her from school. I am going to get a letter from my doctor stating that she is suffering from some rare illness, and that she is advised complete bed rest, in healthy, clean surroundings. Then I will take her to Silvassa with me for a few months. The baby will be born there and we will hand it over to the Sai Baba Orphanage. Next year Prarthana will resume her education, this time at a school of my choosing, an all-girls convent.’
‘But what will you tell Anand?’
‘Nothing,’ said Kiran determinedly. ‘Absolutely nothing. And he will not ask. Anand is self-absorbed at the best of times. He works such long hours, I barely see him any more. And this year he is busy establishing his new plant in Delhi. He is hardly home as it is. He won’t even notice that Prarthana and I have vanished for six months.’
Poppy detected a note of bitterness in her cousin’s voice. So perhaps the perfect life that Kiran always crowed about wasn’t so perfect after all. But who was Poppy to judge? Every marriage concealed its own disappointments, its little trials and tribulations.
The Swiss clock suddenly chimed the hour. An alpine maid emerged from the face of the clock, hotly pursued by an eager young man in lederhosen and a bewildered-looking cow… and it was at this very instant that the Idea popped into Poppy’s head.
For a full minute, she sat there, not daring to breathe, while the Idea sat in her mind, glistening like a newly buttered ball of dough.
‘There is another way,’ she said finally.
Kiran looked up from her misery. ‘What way?’
Poppy looked at her cousin, and wondered if what she was about to say would sound insane or inspired. In the end, she simply said it, just like that. And then she sat back and waited for Kiran’s verdict.
VISIT TO THE VICTIM’S HOME
Following the visit to the hospital, Chopra decided to return to the Sahar police station. The meeting with Homi had affected him greatly. Now that he had proved that the boy’s death had not been accidental, he felt compelled to follow up with Inspector Suryavansh.
He found the new commanding officer in his office, loudly berating Sub-Inspector Patil, who Chopra had always found to be a competent, if rather undemonstrative, officer. He discovered Rangwalla waiting outside Suryavansh’s office, and a trembling Constable Surat.
‘Why is he giving Patil such a firing?’ asked Chopra. He himself had never felt the need to shout at his men. When they made mistakes, he had made his displeasure known in no uncertain terms, but he felt that shouting at people was counter-productive. You could never get to the heart of what had caused the mistake if only one person did the talking. Besides, in his experience, being shouted at by your superior officer only made you wary of sharing information with him in the future. Sometimes that could be the difference between solving or not solving a case.
He was also shocked by the expletives that Inspector Suryavansh was directing Patil’s way. Suryavansh had insulted not only every member of Patil’s family, both living and deceased, but had also accused Patil of unnatural acts with beasts of burden. Chopra wondered how he himself would have reacted if ACP Suresh Rao had ever spoken to him in such a manner.
‘Poor Patil,’ said Rangwalla. ‘He’s been working on the Hayat arson case; you know, the man who was accused of burning down his neighbour’s shop in Brahman Wadi and then absconding? It seems Patil got a tip-off about where the scoundrel was hiding. This morning he set up a team to make the arrest. They were waiting around for hours. And then Patil felt the call of nature. He was gone for five minutes. When he returned, he discovered that one of his men had spotted the arsonist, but because he’d been sitting around without moving for so long, he suffered cramp when he tried to move and fell off his perch, alerting the fellow. By the time they got themselves organised to chase him, he had vanished back into the street.’
Chopra told Rangwalla about the autopsy. Rangwalla was interested but did not seem enthusiastic. ‘Sir, I have to warn you that I do not think the inspector will appreciate your efforts. As far as he is concerned that case is closed. He told me so himself. In fact, he even asked me to inform him when the family had cremated the body, so that the Final Report could be written up.’
Chopra’s forehead creased into a frown, but he held his tongue.
The door to Suryavansh’s office opened and a glassy-eyed Patil stumbled away.
Chopra did not wait for an invitation.
When he entered the office, the inspector stared at him as if he had no idea who he was. Finally recognition dawned and he ushered Chopra into a seat. His face still looked thunderous. Chopra felt like an unwelcome guest at a bereavement.
Inspector Suryavansh was the largest policeman Chopra had ever met. He was very dark-skinned, with a bristling moustache and extremely white teeth. He looked like a movie star from the South, thought Chopra. His voice seemed to emanate from the region of his belly, travelling up through his chest–where it was amplified by the bellows of his lungs–to emerge from his mouth as a miniature avalanche of sound, ready to roll over anything in its path.
Chopra knew that Suryavansh had come from a plum posting in south Mumbai in the affluent Nariman Point district. He wondered what the man had done to get himself booted out to the suburbs. Perhaps it was the drinking…
‘However did you manage with these fellows?’ barked Suryavansh, shaking his head. ‘It’s going to take me a while to whip them into shape.’
Chopra bristled inwardly at the implied insult, but held his tongue. He did not want to get into a contest of egos with Inspector Suryavansh. Keeping his irritation from his voice, he quickly explained the results of the autopsy that he had asked Homi Contractor to carry out.
At this point Inspector Suryavansh became decidedly animated. ‘By whose authority did you request this autopsy!’ he demanded. ‘My dear Chopra, you are retired. This is no longer your business. These are now police matters, and you are no longer a policeman. I am most disturbed by these actions, most disturbed.’
Chopra
explained that even a simple citizen of the city had a duty to help the police in their investigations.
‘But we do not want your help!’ protested Suryavansh. ‘What would happen if everyone went around trying to help the police? My dear sir, I must ask you to stop interfering with this case.’
‘I will stop interfering if you assure me that the matter will now be properly investigated,’ said Chopra, his voice finally becoming stern.
‘I do not have to assure you of anything,’ said Suryavansh. It was clear that he was struggling to control his temper. ‘In fact, I would be within my rights to report you.’ It was not clear whom he could report Chopra to.
‘The boy was murdered,’ said Chopra resolutely. ‘The question is, what are you going to do about it?’
‘It is just your theory!’ said Suryavansh loudly. ‘You said yourself the autopsy proved the boy had been drinking. We have the whisky bottle next to the body. Case is closed.’
‘What about all the other evidence? The blood under his fingernails? The marks on his neck?’
‘Who knows?’ glowered Suryavansh. ‘Maybe he had a fight with his girlfriend. Maybe she tried to strangle him, and he tried to fight her off. Maybe that’s why he was drinking.’
‘If this is so, you can send an officer to his home. You can find out who his girlfriend is and verify this.’
‘Do you think my men are sitting around here with nothing better to do than chase wild gooses?’
My men! At this point Chopra had to use all his legendary self-control to stop himself from shouting. His hands gripped the arms of his wooden chair until his knuckles turned white. Finally he got to his feet. ‘Am I to take it that you will not be pursuing this investigation further?’
‘You can take it that I will pursue this investigation as far as I deem fit,’ growled Suryavansh, also getting to his feet. The big policeman towered over Chopra. Then suddenly he seemed to relent. ‘Look, I understand what is happening. You have retired. It is a big adjustment. But take one piece of advice from me. Let it go. Forget about the police work. Enjoy your retirement. Take your wife to Shimla. Go and watch cricket. You will live a much happier life. If you do not, you will be seeing crimes in your sleep for the rest of your days, crimes you cannot solve.’
Chopra left the station thoroughly disheartened. He was certain now that Suryavansh would do nothing to find the boy’s killer. It was simply not high enough on his list of priorities. What had the boy’s mother said? “For a poor woman and her poor son, there is no justice.”
And suddenly he realised that he was not going to let this lie. He was not going to simply forget about this case, as Inspector Suryavansh had suggested. He could not.
Chopra had been a meticulous police officer, a man of method and painstaking procedure. Usually all it took to crack a case was this attention to detail that had become legendary amongst his fellow officers. But sometimes one had to rely on that oldest of police tools: intuition. Gut instinct. And Chopra’s gut was telling him that this poor boy’s murder had to be solved. And if the police were not going to solve it, then someone else had to take the responsibility.
There were twenty million souls living in the city of Mumbai. They were interconnected, Chopra had always felt, like a great hive of bees. And when one of those souls died in a manner that was unnatural, unjust, it was the responsibility of the hive to resolve the matter. Though he was not a religious man, Chopra was convinced that if this did not happen then the boy’s soul would not find moksha. It would continue to wander in the limbo between death and rebirth, unable to live or die in peace.
It was not difficult to find the Marol Mayavati complex. It was a poor neighbourhood a twenty-minute walk away from the Sahar police station. The houses were clustered around an old disused patch of wasteground, which, in the monsoon season, turned into a series of miniature lakes. In the prolonged heat it had been baked into a cracked and fissured desert.
A thick, curdled stench arose from a pile of rubbish in one corner of the wasteground. Pigs rooted in the rubbish while stray dogs barked at them excitedly. Wild pigs and dogs were so common in Mumbai that Chopra had often thought that they should have been lauded as the city’s unofficial mascots.
When he knocked on the door of the dilapidated home Chopra steeled himself to confront the woman he had seen at the police station, the boy’s mother. Instead the door was opened by an elderly man wearing a white kurta, black trousers, open-toed sandals and spectacles. The man had a kindly, avuncular face and an air of composure. He was holding a newspaper. ‘Yes?’
‘My name is Inspector Chopra. I have come to make enquiries about the death of your son.’
The man said nothing for a moment, then nodded. ‘Please come in, Inspector.’
The home had only three rooms: a living area, which also doubled up as a bedroom and kitchen; a bathing room and toilet; and a small second bedroom. There were dirty pans on the stove. The man noticed Chopra’s gaze. ‘My wife is resting,’ he apologised. ‘She has not been well. You understand.’
Chopra nodded. He understood. He understood the woman’s anger. But how could he hope to understand her grief?
‘Please sit down. Can I offer you something to drink? Some lemon water? Or Coca-Cola?’
‘No, thank you.’
The man’s name was Pramod. Pramod Achrekar, the boy’s father.
He showed Chopra a photograph, the boy with his parents on the day that he had passed out from his SSC examinations. ‘He was in the top three of his class,’ said Achrekar proudly. Chopra regarded the picture. His first impression had been correct; Santosh had indeed been a handsome young man. Young and fresh-looking, with that air of self-confidence that the young had nowadays. His whole future laid out before him.
Chopra explained the reason for his visit. He told the boy’s father about the autopsy that he had requested, and its results. The man’s face seemed to gather an air of deep sadness. ‘A policeman telephoned from the station. He told me that my son had died accidentally. That he was a drunk, and that his own foolishness had killed him. I did not want to believe him; if Santosh had been a drunk we would have seen some sign of it before now. But then how well do we really know our children? My wife was not convinced. She said right from the beginning that this could not be an accident. But then, mothers do not see any faults in their sons.’
‘Were there?’ asked Chopra. ‘Faults in your son, I mean?’
Achrekar removed his spectacles and rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘He was not perfect. He was a wilful boy. After his SSCs he stopped listening to my advice. I wanted him to continue studying, to attend university, but he wanted to work, to earn money. It’s funny, when they are young they need you for everything; but as soon as they stand on their feet, they don’t need you for anything at all.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I remember when he was a little boy, he contracted malaria. For a week it was so bad that we thought he would die. Even the doctors had given up on him. I tried to be the strong man of the house, but inside it was as if God were squeezing my heart inside his fist.’
Chopra felt the old man’s silent, dignified grief spreading like a deadly gas, filling the little home. ‘Where did he work?’
‘He joined the organisation of some exporter. A big local businessman. Santosh told us that the businessman was very impressed with his enthusiasm. He was quickly promoted and worked directly for the head office.’
‘Who was this businessman?’ asked Chopra, taking out his notebook. ‘I would like to talk to him.’
‘His name is Jaitley, Mr Arun Jaitley,’ said Achrekar. ‘The head office is nearby, on Andheri Kurla Road, near the Kohinoor Continental hotel. I don’t know much more about him than that, except that Santosh told me he was local to this area. I asked Santosh many times for more information, but he always said that his boss had instructed his staff to guard his privacy.’
‘What is he doing here?’
Chopra turned. In the doorway of the adjoining bedroom was the b
oy’s mother. Her face was puffy with grief, and there was a vacant expression in her eyes.
Achrekar got up and moved towards his wife. He stood between them and explained to her why Chopra had come. Chopra expected that she would begin to rail at him, as she had done the other day. But instead her legs seemed to buckle under her and she collapsed into a chair by the stove. Her head fell into her hands and her body shook with silent sobs.
Achrekar returned to Chopra. ‘You must excuse her,’ he said. ‘She was always very close to him. He was our only son. We have two daughters, elder to Santosh. They have both married and moved away. Now we are alone.’
‘Do not apologise,’ said Chopra. He could not imagine what it would be like, to raise a child, to love that child more than anything in the world, and then to light the funeral pyre of that child. A child should never die before its parents: that was a rule of nature. ‘Please excuse me, but I would like to see the place where Santosh slept, where he kept his clothes, any wardrobe or almirah.’
‘Yes, of course.’
Achrekar led Chopra into the room from which his wife had emerged. ‘This was Santosh’s room.’
It was a tiny room with a single small cot and a grey steel wardrobe. On the wall was a picture of Salman Khan, Bollywood superstar, in his trademark white vest sitting astride a Hero Honda motorbike. ‘May I examine his things?’
‘Of course,’ said Achrekar. ‘I will leave you to do your work.’
Chopra opened the wardrobe. On the shelves, neatly stacked, were the boy’s clothes. Shirts, trousers, jeans, socks, underwear.
One by one Chopra took out each item of clothing and searched through the pockets. He did not find anything.
He opened a small drawer built into the wardrobe. Inside were pens, a handful of coins, a stack of visiting cards wrapped in a rubber band, and a diary.
Chopra sat down on the cot and thumbed through the visiting cards. Nothing leaped out at him, at first, and then he went back through the cards and took out a white, gilt-edged one. He looked at it. It said:
