by Vaseem Khan
Chopra stopped outside a small shop that was one of a number of such establishments crowded along either side of a dusty parade. The shops along the arcade had names such as NUMBER ONE LEATHER, ITALIANO LEATHER EXPORTS and ULTIMATE FASHIONS LEATHER HOUSE. He looked at the sign above the shop in front of which he had stopped. MOTILAL’S LEATHER EMPORIUM. The shop was glass-fronted, like most of the premises on the arcade. In the window a number of leather purses could be seen displayed on a series of floating shelves. Beside them, a headless mannequin modelled a brown leather coat.
He looked around. A palm tree grew on the edge of the parade. A raucous gaggle of street children were playing a game of cricket, and had chalked a set of stumps onto the tree’s trunk. They were playing the game with a balding tennis ball and an ancient bat held together with tape. When the children spotted him with Ganesha in tow they abandoned their game and clustered around, wanting to touch the baby elephant. Chopra noticed that Ganesha automatically drew closer to him. ‘Leave the poor animal alone!’ he admonished the children.
He chained Ganesha around the tree’s trunk, then once more warned the kids against interfering with him. Then in a flash of inspiration, he realised there was a better way: he removed his wallet and showed them a twenty-rupee note. ‘This is for you,’ he said. ‘I am Inspector Chopra and you are now my deputies and must look after this elephant. He is vital to a very important case.’
The kids looked at Ganesha with renewed interest. One of them, a floppy-haired boy in a string vest and torn shorts, said: ‘These days you can’t buy anything for twenty chips, sahib.’
What a cheeky rascal! thought Chopra, but he couldn’t help smiling. ‘Twenty is all you will get,’ he said. ‘Take it or leave it.’
He left Ganesha nervously peeking out from behind the tree as he watched the children resume their game of cricket, and entered the shop.
Inside, there were more mannequins, racks of coats and jackets, and shelves crammed with leather goods: bags, wallets, belts, knife sheaths, wine casks. The air was pregnant with the heady musk of new leather. Decorating the walls were framed pictures of customers of the shop, minor Mumbai celebrities and a few foreigners who had ventured into Dharavi in search of a bargain. Many of the goods in the shop carried the emblems of famous Italian brands. But he was not here to make a dent in the sea of counterfeit merchandise produced in Dharavi each year.
At the rear of the shop there was a counter, before which a peon dozed fitfully on a stool.
Chopra moved towards the peon, who, as if activated by a hidden alarm, awoke with a start and leaped to his feet, toppling the stool with a clatter.
‘Where is the owner of the shop?’ asked Chopra.
‘Sahib, I will fetch him right away!’ The peon lifted a hatch in the counter and disappeared through a door in the wall behind it.
Moments later, a fat man with a bulbous nose, heavy jowls and a thicket of curly black hair emerged from the doorway. He too looked as if he had been awoken from sleep. ‘Hello, sir, hello!’ he said enthusiastically, practically rubbing his chubby hands. ‘What can I do for you today? You look like a man who needs a new jacket! Yes, with your height, and those impressive shoulders, I have just the piece for you! It is an Italian cut, the very latest design!’
‘I do not want a jacket,’ said Chopra sternly. ‘My name is Inspector Chopra and I am here to make enquiries about a boy that you knew.’
‘Boy? What boy?’ The man’s face had darkened. He was no longer the bustling proprietor of a successful leather emporium eager to conclude a sale. Chopra sensed a note of fear in the man’s voice. He removed the photograph that Achrekar had given him and showed it to the man, who he assumed was Motilal.
Motilal examined the photograph in his chubby hands. His fingers were encrusted with rings, and gold chains jangled on both wrists. ‘Sir, I have never seen this boy before,’ he said eventually.
Chopra had heard many men lie. Some were masters at it, and even a police officer with years of experience could not be sure when they were being deceitful. And then there were others, like Motilal, whose lies were as plain as the nose on their face.
‘Let me warn you,’ he said sternly, ‘we know that this boy knew you. He kept a written record of meetings that he had with you. The boy was murdered five days ago. If you do not cooperate with me I will haul you to the station for questioning. And then we will see what you know.’
Motilal blanched. ‘Murdered! Dear Shiva! Sir, I have nothing to do with any murder, nothing at all. I am just a humble leather merchant.’
Chopra looked expansively around the shop. ‘Perhaps a raid by the IRS will jog your memory,’ he said.
Motilal turned an even whiter shade of pale. There was a type of person in Mumbai more terrified of a raid by the tax authorities than the thought of being implicated in a murder. ‘Let me see that picture again…’ He pretended to re-examine the photo. ‘Ah, yes, now that you mention it, I think this boy came here a few times recently. He was simply an administrative clerk, you know. No one important.’
No one important, thought Chopra. A sudden surge of anger welled inside him. But before he could give the sweating shop owner a piece of his mind, the door jangled open behind him.
A tall bald man with a pitted skull entered. He wore a half-sleeved shirt, open at the chest, revealing thick curls of hair and a tangle of gold chains. In the cramped space he loomed like a giant.
Chopra looked at the man’s face. The forehead was corrugated above thick eyebrows and narrow eyes. Thick lips sat below a fleshy nose. The man had a heavy, muscular build, and a nasty look. Goonda… that was the word that rose unbidden to his lips. A hired thug. A goon. He had seen many of them in his time.
The man returned Chopra’s look with a belligerent one of his own. Then he transferred his gaze to Motilal, and the photograph still clutched in his sweating hand. ‘What is going on here?’
‘Oh, nothing, nothing,’ said Motilal a little too quickly. ‘The inspector here was simply asking about some boy.’
‘What boy?’
‘Some boy who was murdered.’
‘Murdered? People are murdered in Mumbai every day. It’s practically our main line of business. If we started worrying about every person who was murdered in this city no one would do any other work.’ He turned to Chopra. ‘If you’re looking for witnesses, Inspector, you’re wasting your time. This is Dharavi. People understand about minding their own business here.’
‘Yes, yes,’ sang Motilal. ‘Minding my own business is practically my religion! Ha ha!’ The man glared at him and he turned a sickly yellow. Chopra noted real terror in the merchant’s eyes. He understood now where the power lay in the room. But how was Motilal mixed up with this thug? Was it simply a case of extortion, of weekly protection money? Or was it bigger than that? Did the thug represent some local outfit exporting counterfeit goods, perhaps? Chopra knew this kind of man. He was bad news.
‘The boy was killed in Marol,’ said Chopra evenly.
‘Then you are a little out of your territory, aren’t you?’ The big man turned to Motilal. ‘I have some business with you,’ he said. ‘And that is surely none of your business, Inspector.’
The two men disappeared into the rear office.
Chopra waited, considering his options. He could continue to bluff it out, and tackle the brute and Motilal head-on. But the thug did not look as if he was fazed by Chopra’s credentials as a police officer, and he could not afford to have his bluff called. Alternatively, he could wait for the brute to leave and try to tackle Motilal again on his own. He sensed that while the thug was around he was not going to get anything useful out of the shop owner, assuming there was anything useful to be had. He had come here on a hunch; it was only in the movies that hunches paid off each and every time. Most of the time they led precisely nowhere.
The peon hovered around Chopra, unsure of how to treat him. Clearly he was a police officer, and therefore to be handled with care. But at the same
time he was also someone who was causing his master some anxiety. In the end Chopra solved his problem by leaving the shop.
He walked across the parade to the tree where he had tethered Ganesha. The children playing cricket had finished their game and disappeared back into the slum. As he approached, the elephant lumbered to his feet. For the first time Ganesha seemed to show some recognition of him, extending his trunk and touching Chopra’s hand. It was an encouraging sign. ‘We’re not going just yet, boy,’ he said.
They waited. Around them the life of Dharavi continued. People drifted down the parade, some on private errands, others flirting with the various leather shops before deciding to enter a particular one. A handcart-wallah selling lime water rattled by. Chopra purchased ten glasses, one for himself and nine for Ganesha, who slurped up the cool liquid with his trunk and shot it into his mouth. Even the little elephant seemed to be feeling the extraordinary heat.
Finally, just when he was about to give up, the big man emerged from the shop.
Chopra moved behind the tree and watched him as he clambered astride a motorbike parked outside the shop and stamped on the starter pedal. Nothing happened. The man swore and tried again. Still nothing. He got off the bike and bent down to examine it. He lifted the engine cap and fiddled inside. Then he tried to start it again. The machine remained coolly unresponsive. Enraged, the thug kicked the bike forcefully, toppling it onto its side. He continued to kick at it on the ground, all the while abusing it loudly.
Eventually, he stood back and looked up at the sky. He wiped the sweat from his pitted skull with the back of his hairy arm. Then he reached behind him and pulled something from the pocket of his jeans. It was a hat, like a combat beret, but bright red, made of a shimmering velvety fabric. Red velvet.
Chopra stood frozen behind his tree. He remembered the motorbike tracks that he had seen at the site of the boy’s murder; how they had suggested to him that two men had been on the bike, perhaps Santosh and a second heavier man. A big man. Homi Contractor had surmised that the fibres found under Santosh’s fingernails came from a red velvet shirt. But that had just been a guess. The fibres did not have to come from a shirt at all.
The man put the hat on, reached inside the waistband of his jeans and took out a package wrapped in brown paper. He examined it, then tucked it back inside his denims. Then he set off down the road. Chopra unchained Ganesha and began to follow him.
THE ATLAS MEGA MALL
Chopra was glad that the man had chosen to walk, rather than take a taxi. As it turned out they did not have far to go.
They tramped along Station Road and onto the Sion-Bandra Link Road, which served as a bridge over the Mahim creek. Almost as soon as they crossed over to the far side, the man turned off the road and walked down into the newly redeveloped business district that ran along the bank of the creek. He carried on walking right up to the Bandra Kurla Complex, which was now home to such global giants as Google. Here the reclaimed land had been cleared and flattened and a whole new shopping development had been created, with wide lanes, huge car parks and gigantic superstores.
At the centre of the new shopping zone was its star attraction, the Atlas Mega Mall, said to be the largest shopping mall in the whole of Asia. Over a million square feet in retail space, with one thousand-plus outlets under one roof providing a ‘one-stop destination for every shopping, leisure, entertainment, lifestyle and eating requirement of every customer’.
Even from a distance the mall looked imposing, thought Chopra, who had never been inside. In fact, he had never been inside any of the new malls that had recently sprung up around Mumbai.
He found something intrinsically vulgar and alien about them, from the sheer arrogance of their size, to the conveyor-belt so-called hospitality of their service. He had made a point of continuing to patronise the smaller shops that he had always frequented, even though they were rapidly being forced out of business by the new behemoths.
His tailor, Ramesh, had bemoaned his dwindling customer base. ‘Who wants my shirts any more, Inspector Sahib?’ he had griped. ‘Now they can go to the mall and buy shirts by Mr Van Hussain, and Mr Loose Phillips.’
Chopra did not need Van Heusen and Louis Philippe shirts. He had no use for Apple accessories and Ray-Ban sunglasses. Sometimes it seemed to him that the whole country was being rebranded. He imagined lines of Indians moving past booths manned by representatives of foreign multinationals; as each Indian went past he was stripped of his traditional clothes, his traditional values, and given new things to wear, new things to think. Branded and rewired, this new model of Indian went back to his home thinking that he was now truly a modern Indian, and what a fine thing that was. But all Chopra saw was the gradual death of the culture that had always made him proud of his incredible country.
Poppy, of course, did not share his views.
Poppy had been an early victim of the mall mania. She had been instantly beguiled by the bright lights, glitzy displays and insouciant sales-boys with their slicked-back hair and garishly coloured uniforms. She loved to have them buzzing around her, telling her how she looked like such-and-such movie heroine in this outfit or that.
The mall was fronted by a grand plaza in which fountains in the shape of drooling lions sprayed water majestically in all directions. Coloured pennants fluttered at the top of forty-metre-high flagpoles. The mall’s façade was covered in a skin of stainless-steel panels, which reflected the sun blindingly into the eyes of the dazed customers moving lemming-like towards the grand parade of glass entrance doors set above a flight of marbled steps.
Chopra was finding it increasingly difficult to track his target, but, thankfully, the man’s height and the brightly coloured beret made his task simpler. He watched now as the man disappeared into the mall.
Chopra surged forward, pulling Ganesha up the flight of shallow steps. At the entrance doors a liveried guard halted him. ‘Sir, you cannot enter the premises!’
‘Why ever not?’ said Chopra, bristling.
The man’s eyes drifted behind him, as if the answer to this question was self-evident.
Ganesha! In the excitement of the chase, Chopra had almost forgotten that he was currently accompanied by a two-hundred-kilo elephant.
He looked around. The crowds poured around them, a few stopping from their headlong rush into the theatre of dreams to shoot a quizzical look at the strange man and his elephant. Ganesha had drawn close to him; he could feel the little elephant’s nervousness. Chopra knew he could not leave him out here, amidst this sea of strangers. Dr Lala had said that elephants were highly emotional creatures. He imagined how a young human child would feel being left alone amidst a crowd. No, he could not do that.
‘Step aside,’ Chopra said to the doorman. ‘This is official police business.’
‘But sir!’
Chopra barged past the man, pulling Ganesha behind him. Luckily the doors were very wide, and the elephant had no trouble passing through. Behind them, he could hear the doorman complaining to a colleague, and the crackle of a walkie-talkie summoning reinforcements.
Inside, the lobby was a bedlam of noise and movement. Rock music blared from hidden speakers. There were glass elevators moving up and down, and a giant tropical fish tank. A curtain of water fell from above into a rock pool. People moved in all directions, like shoals of fish–groups of teenagers, couples, whole families with babies and grandparents in tow. There were jugglers and face-painters and even a fire-breather in bright red leather tights. It was more like a carnival than a place for shopping, thought Chopra in horror.
Or a lunatic asylum where the inmates had taken over.
Suddenly, he felt a tug on his arm. He looked down. A small child in a bright yellow Nike T-shirt and sports shoes that lit up with red runway lights looked up at him with a belligerent expression. ‘I want to ride your elephant,’ he said.
‘This elephant is not for riding,’ said Chopra.
A fat man in a similarly bright red Nike T-shirt
and glistening, permed hair in which were parked designer sunglasses, stood in front of him. ‘Come now, fellow, my son wants to ride on your elephant. How much is it?’
‘This elephant is not for riding,’ he repeated, a little more gruffly.
‘Nonsense,’ barked the fat man. ‘What do you want? Fifty rupees? One hundred? Whatever my son wants, my son gets. Come now, how much? Don’t haggle with me, I’m no tourist, you know.’
‘Get out of my way,’ growled Chopra, brushing past the fat man.
In the middle of the lobby a series of grand escalators took centre stage. He could see the man in the red hat on one of them, gliding up to the next floor of the mall.
He moved to the foot of the central escalator and stepped on board. Suddenly, he found himself tugged back. Behind him, Ganesha had planted his feet and was making it clear that he had no intention of boarding the moving staircase.
‘Come on, boy,’ grunted Chopra, pulling on the chain and furiously backpedalling as he sought to maintain his balance on the ascending steps. Ganesha dug in his heels, and with a quick jerk of his neck, yanked Chopra from the escalator. The inspector landed in a heap. Ganesha snorted and moved further backwards.
Around him, Chopra heard people laughing.
‘Come on, do another one!’ someone guffawed as he rose to his feet and dusted himself off.
‘Yes,’ said a portly woman in a bright orange sari, ‘do the one where the elephant rolls over.’
