“I am not going to die… no… no…” he said again and again, but it was difficult to concentrate with the message playing loudly in his head. As the façade of external defense broke, Adesh started crying for the first time in his adult life. Those were tears of blind animal fury that had no specific target, not even his captors. He cried hard and without a break.
When he finished crying, his face felt swollen and there was a buzz in his head, his throat felt parched, but strangely, the crying fit had helped him overcome his panic attack. Now there was no pain in his left side. Now he was furious, his fury had acquired a specific target.
The fucker who made him wet his eyes and pants both for the first time in his adult life, was going to pay… YESSIR!!! That much was for sure. The son of a bitch was going to call him tomorrow to ask if he got the message, wasn’t he? Good for him. Adesh remembered the keys of his buddy’s house in Khandala. The buddy was in Kuwait currently. The house sat on one the lesser known hilltops of the scenic town, and thus was a perfect place to hold somebody, till Adesh could get the names and addresses of his hired thugs out of him.
Adesh imagined his captor to be some sort of a sissy middle aged businessman cut up over some business deal lost to Adesh. It would be fun to watch him wet both the front and the back of his suit pants, Adesh thought and a wild laughter rose up in his parched throat. He had no doubt he could get the names out of the sissy asshole. A couple of minutes with his toes held on a Zippo lighter, or better still with a live wire against the tip of his shriveled little dick, should do the trick most satisfactorily. Then Adesh could take his time killing the man. Though Adesh had never killed a man, he had no doubt he could do it, and enjoy doing it. Actually it might be some kind of catharsis. Quieting the demons inside, while killing a sissy outside. But gotta get that right… slow does it baby, yeah it sure does!!!
The next half hour Adesh made several plans, each one more sadistic than the previous one, of killing his captor and his hired goons. In those plans, he was the cool suave sociopath, and they were the shivering, scared- shitless morons who had realized that they had fucked with the wrong man. Finally he settled upon killing the BOSS (Adesh though the name would do for time being, he had never liked Bruce Springsteen anyway) by hanging him with a noose around his balls after cutting off his tongue. He was already feeling curious about what sort of noise a dying man would make without a tongue in his mouth.
It must be noted, however, that none of his plans had the practical creativity with which Neeraj Joshi was about to murder him.
***
Adesh was shaken rudely out of his slumber by a few brisk slaps on his cheeks. He opened his eyes, still groggy, and saw a figure sitting on the floor of the van with a mask on its face.
“Mr. Adesh I have come to take you back home. Now I am going to take that tape off your mouth, and give you a sleeping pill, since it would be better if you are not awake when I drop you off. I understand that you have had a long and ummm..singular day and you might be feeling a bit pissed off at the world in general, so a word of caution.” here the man dropped on one elbow, so that his masked face was a few inches from Adesh’s. His left hand had a gun, and now he pressed it directly between Adesh’s eyes before resuming.
“Please take the pill like a good boy. If you scream when I take that tape off, I am going to put a bullet in you, if you try to bite me, I am going to put a bullet in you, in fact if you move any part of your body other than your jaw, I am going to put a bullet in you. So, control that urge and just hang on. Another couple of hours and you will be home taking a shower and singing songs. Trust you to choose well,” and with this warning his captor peeled the tape off his mouth. He held out a small blue pill, and Adesh opened his mouth and swallowed it. He had no intention of screaming or biting. He knew that this guy was a professional, and if he wanted to kill Adesh he would be dead now. An escape attempt at this stage was an invitation to death. He swallowed the pill and chewed on it. His empty stomach heaved and bitter bile rose up his throat. Adesh held on with a supreme effort of will power.
“Good boy,” the fingers slapped his cheeks lightly. And the figure turned around before pulling his mask off. Then his captor slid in the driver’s seat without opening the door. Adesh felt the engine revving off, and the floor beneath him shook a little. After a few minutes, he could hear the blare of horns, and every once in a while his eyes, beneath the black tape (his captor had pulled it on after giving him the pill), could feel the brightness of city lights. He was very likely in the heart of the city, probably been so throughout the day. His captor enlightened him.
“How’s that for a trick huh? You were parked in the pay-and-park lot of BMC near Shivaji Park. If you would have just given a few hard kicks to the door, somebody would have come investigating and you would have been free, but my boss knew you are a yellow gut bastard who would do nothing but shit his pants. The smell of you tells me that he was right, what do you say?” there was something odd about the way that man was talking, like he had a couple of cotton balls waded in his mouth.
“I say your boss bought another shock up his asshole before dying” Adesh thought, as sleepiness began to wash over him. His last coherent thought was about a customer called Jignesh Hirwani. Then he fell asleep.
In that state of semi consciousness that we call dreaming, Adesh dreamt of something that had happened to him in 1999.
He saw that little prick Neeraj Joshi and himself making a joint call to a retired diamond merchant called Jignesh Hirwani. Neeraj had presented the whole wealth management solution, and had finished by saying “so that is what investments with us mean Sir, a lifetime of collaboration and servicing. We may not have a jazzy name to our select client’s club like Citi Gold but we sure work a lot harder for them. Trust you to choose well...”
The last sentence remained in Adesh’s mind as he surfaced to consciousness briefly. Where had he heard the phrase recently? He thought he had the answer, but before he could grasp it he fell into a slumber again.
In the driver’s seat Neeraj Joshi lit a cigarette and switched on the high beam, as he pulled out of Mumbai at last to hit the old Mumbai Goa highway. He was now driving towards the final resting place for Adesh Bandodkar.
Unbeknownst to him, Adesh’s grave was dug and ready for three days now. Neeraj Joshi had spent an entire Sunday digging it, and then he had covered it with a stolen BMC manhole cover.
The place was on the outskirts of a small village called Somtane in Konkan about 75 kilometers from Mumbai. Neeraj, who knew Konkan like the back of his hand, had chosen this place for its proximity to Mumbai and for the extremely low population. A quiet sleepy place that did not rate even a dot on the map, perfect for a moonlit burial.
The grave was eight feet deep and 3 X 3 wide. After digging it, he had spread all the loose soil in the surrounding area, and then covered the ditch with the manhole cover. He hoped now that nobody had stumbled upon it in the last three days. He hoped, but did not worry too much about it, since it was something that he had already taken into account. He planned to stake the place out on foot, and if he found that the grave had been discovered then he would return to the van, pull Adesh on the road, and shoot him in the head right on the highway. The dead body would go in the sea, and with some luck would take days before being found.
His thoughts were disturbed as Adesh began screaming through the tape on his mouth.
“A nightmare? Shhh. Go back to sleep baby” Neeraj said over his shoulders casually.
Adesh was screaming in his sleep indeed, struggling to regain consciousness. Suddenly the sentence ‘trust you to choose well’ had resolved the mystery of his kidnapping. And when Adesh realized Neeraj Joshi was his kidnapper, he knew it was not meant to be a warning, that he was not going to be set free, he was not going to live to fight another day. This realization brought home the terror he had been struggling with since the afternoon and then the screams came…..
But the goddamned pill…. ‘Ohh
I feel so sleepy’ Adesh thought with the helplessness of a sinking man.
***
When he came to again, the smell of the sea was his sense. The air was considerably colder now, and the night was bright with the full moon just above the horizon. In the bright moonlight Adesh noticed his present condition.
He was buried up to his neck. The ditch he was buried in ended about three feet over his head. The earth around him was damp, but felt solid. He could hear footsteps and the faint sound of singing from above him.
The incredulity of it all took around thirty seconds to turn into pure physical terror. During those thirty seconds Adesh though he was in his bed at home, dreaming. A nightmare so vivid, that he could smell the salty air of the sea and could feel the damp coldness of the red soil around him. Then a fresh installment of red soil fell all over him, and the incredulity turned into terror. Adesh howled.
Neeraj Joshi was sitting with his legs comfortable stretched in front of him, smoking a cigarette. The ditch could not be seen from the road since it was away and downhill from the highway. Neeraj knew he need not check on his victim. He had found a strong pulse before sliding Adesh in the grave, and then it was simply a matter of waiting for the screams to come from the grave. When the subhuman noise came, Neeraj took his time getting up and walking to the edge so that he could look Adesh in face.
“Shut up Adesh,” Neeraj said prodding his forehead with a sneaker toe “It will be over in a few minutes now,” Adesh stared at him open mouthed, the screams died in his throat.
“I was waiting for you to come around, so that you could end your miserable life by knowing who killed you. Now that you know, I will finish burying you and walk away. I read somewhere that loose earth holds enough oxygen for a buried man to survive for up to sixteen hours, though the survival time will be cut down considerably if the said man is in shit shape, like you are,”
Adesh tried to struggle free, summoning every last bit of energy his wrecked, abused body could muster. But the earth held firm. Neeraj had spent nearly an hour pressing the loose soil with his shovel. Now it wouldn’t give an inch.
“Stop struggling Adesh, do you think I would spend so much of time planning and bringing you here, only for you to escape because I was too lazy to press the soil? You know me better don’t you?”
“You crazy bastard, let me go,” Adesh said in a croak.
“You are a lousy negotiator Adesh, if you are asking a man to spare your life; calling him crazy bastard is hardly conducive to the process. What do you think?”
In the ambient moonlight Adesh saw Neeraj’s face, and noticed a strong feeling of satisfaction there. That expression told him why Neeraj had taken so much of time and effort, instead of choosing to wait for Adesh in a dark alley with a knife.
“Please Neeraj let me go man, I swear on my mother’s name, I will not tell anyone. I will not tell even Satish Sir. Nobody will know this happened.”
“Nobody would know as it is, so don’t worry.” said Neeraj, and resumed shoveling dirt inside the grave.
“If I go missing, you will be the first person they will suspect,” Adesh said.
Neeraj paused for a moment and laughed. “What makes you think so? After all we only worked together for a couple of years. Agreed we did not get along well but if the police were to make a list of people you did not get along well with, it won’t be a list, it will be a fucking book. Do you think they will bother? I got news for you buddy-o, they won’t.”
“Please let me go, I think I am having another heart attack…”Adesh’s body above the soil was heaving with sobs.
“Best thing for you to happen really, better than dying of asphyxiation or hunger,” Neeraj’s voice was conversational all the time.
“Neeraj please, oh please...” Adesh was crying out loud, praying for someone to hear him in the dead of the night, and rescue him from this mad man.
“Relax Adesh, a hundred years from now, I will be as much part of this earth as you are,” Neeraj said. Now the grave was almost filled, Adesh’s whole body from his chin downwards was underground.
“Why?... oh Why?”
Neeraj leaned in the grave and asked softly “What did you say?”
Adesh spoke through a mouthful of dirt “Why do you want to kill me? Because I took your promotion?.... just a fucking promotion man….” He broke down in sobs once again. Neeraj threw his head back and laughed loud, almost louder than Adesh’s screams of help a moment ago. The laughter scared Adesh more than any of the other atrocities of the day, if his mind was still capable of an emotion like fear. It was like listening to a pack of foxes howling at the moon.
“You are truly a moron Adesh. Even in your last moments you think I am burying you because of that stupid promotion? Oh god….” Here the killer had to pause again to get over his laughter. When he did, he dropped to his knees and brought his face closer to Adesh’s.
“I am doing this because I am a student of killing, and I wanted to murder someone with a perfect plan. You were just there convenient. You see it was the challenge that fascinated me really, you think I am killing you for professional rivalry, you dumb fuck?” Neeraj was showing the first signs of emotions. Then he brought Adesh’s face up by pulling his hair and delivered his final statement of the night.
“I am burying you for fun Adesh, another thing you know nothing about.”
Book 2
Kumbhpur Rising
CHAPTER 1
Head Constable Patode had never felt so miserable in his whole life. At an age of forty three, he was having a king size case of mid life crisis. Now standing in the hot July sun, he wished it would all be over somehow.
Head Constable Patode had been a cop for close to twenty-four years. His father was a cop before him and probably his grandfather before his father. He remembered his father paying twenty five thousand bucks for his son’s appointment letter and from day one Patode was after recovering his father’s investment. He had completed the target at the age of twenty seven, eight years after he was recruited. In the years to follow he lived the normal life of a small town lawman.He accepted bribes for small things, occasionally used the power bestowed upon him by the law to bring peace and order to his town, whenever his seniors thought it convenient, and let anarchy take over at other times, playing the indifferent bystander. Like that strike of farm workers eight years back. The night, when the labors were beaten up and buried alive. Patode a constable back then, was drinking whisky at the house of Randhir Patil known as Rajaji.In Rajaji’s spacious living room they could faintly hear the voices of people screaming and other people shouting, soon the air was thick with acrid smoke of huts burning. Constable Patode had returned home at three in the morning, drunk, and richer by five thousand rupees (his looking the other way came at a price). He had fallen asleep, remembering nothing but his wife’s fragrance in the morning. He felt nothing for the poor people who were killed the previous night. As we said, he was an average small town lawman.
But things were changing slowly. Probably it all started last December, with the mild heart attack he had suffered as a result of a lifetime habit of drinking, He was off duty for four months and even though the department and Rajaji had ensured that all his medical expenses were taken care of, he was still crippled financially. You cannot collect bribes if you are bed ridden. If that was not bad enough, now he had his wife’s infidelity to contend with. Head Constable Patode was sure his wife was cheating on him for the last year or so, that too with his supervisor Inspector Kamble. Sometimes he could detect his fellow constables giving him curious glances, glances with a mixture of pity and contempt, whenever the subject of Inspector Kamble was brought up. His wife, Asha, suddenly started looking a little younger than her thirty five years. Constable Patode was sure he once saw a pack of birth control pills in her purse. Surely the threat was not from him, long before his heart attack, Head Constable Patode was rendered almost impotent by his drinking and smoking. Inspector Kamble, on the other hand was on
ly a little older than Patode’s oldest daughter, Radha. The fucker did not drink much, and was surely in good shape physically. Constable Patode could close his eyes, and imagine Kamble lying naked on top of his wife, the slut’s sari riding to her thighs, and her blouse all the way open .The vision had driven him steadily towards alcoholism again in the last two months. And last night while going home, after another night of drinking with a couple of fellow cops, he had what you would call an epiphany.
Constable Patode lived in a single story house near the outskirts of the village, very close to the place where the mayhem of FUM had taken place eight years back. Riding his motorcycle, he felt the urge to relieve himself, and stopped by the roadside. After he finished and zipped himself back, he saw a man walking towards him. He was about the same age as the constable, and was wearing a dhoti and a threadbare kurta. He was barefoot.
“Going home Saheb?” The man asked. Constable Patode grunted, and ambled towards his bike. As he was pulling the bike off the stand, he heard something that stopped him in his tracks.
“I wouldn’t advise going home so early Saheb.He is still there.”
Constable Patode was on to the stranger in a minute, grabbing him by his kurta, and shoving him against his bike “What are you talking about?”
“Inspector saheb, he is at home with your wife, your children are not at home, right?”
That was right. Both his sons were visiting their married sister in the nearby village. Of late, his wife was very happy to send their children away whenever she could.
The stranger made no effort to escape the cops’ grip. He spoke calmly. “Your wife and the Inspector are together at this moment. She likes men inside her. You remember how her body would get hot, the moment you mounted her, don’t you? Now you cannot do her, so she has hooked the Inspector. His wife is at her mother’s place, and he too is lonely.”
Kumbhpur Rising Page 7
